Yes, you can. The court decided that this kind of right can be abandoned if you act like you don't want it anymore. The court explained that owning the *right to drill* is different from owning the land itself. You can't abandon a piece of land by ignoring it, but you *can* abandon a *right to do something* on that land. To prove abandonment, you need two things: 1) not using the right for a long time, and 2) showing you intended to give it up for good. For most of the families, just ignoring the rights wasn't enough to prove they meant to abandon them, so they got to keep their rights. But for the Weber family, their ancestors had specifically rejected the rights as 'worthless,' which was clear proof of their intent to abandon them, so the Webers lost their claim.

Yes, people can lose their rights to minerals under the ground if they don't use them for a long time and clearly show they don't want them anymore. We decided that these kinds of rights can be given up, even if they're supposed to last forever. We found that some of the people suing (the Weber family) did give up their rights because they clearly said they didn't want them a long time ago. But for the other people suing, just not using the rights for a long time isn't enough to prove they wanted to give them up. There needs to be more proof that they really meant to give up the rights. We also said that the people who own the land on top didn't take over the mineral rights just by using the land, and that waiting a long time to sue doesn't automatically mean you lose your case in this kind of situation.

Yes, a perpetual profit a prendre to extract oil and gas is an incorporeal hereditament that, like an easement, can be extinguished by abandonment. The court reasoned that under California law established in Callahan v. Martin, a grant of oil and gas rights conveys a non-possessory profit a prendre, not a corporeal fee simple estate in the minerals themselves. The rule preventing the abandonment of fee simple estates applies only to corporeal, possessory interests to avoid creating a void in title. Because incorporeal hereditaments like easements and profits can be abandoned without creating such a void (the interest simply reverts to the servient estate), they are subject to abandonment if there is evidence of non-use coupled with an intent to relinquish the right. This policy promotes the marketability of titles and productive use of land by allowing dormant, long-unused interests to be cleared. For most plaintiffs, 47 years of non-use alone was insufficient to prove intent, but for the Weber plaintiffs, their predecessors' explicit 1914 renunciation of the stock as 'worthless' constituted a decisive act demonstrating a clear intent to abandon their interest.

Yes, perpetual mineral rights can be abandoned through non-use and intent to abandon. The court held that profits a prendre, like easements, are incorporeal hereditaments that can be abandoned, even if described as 'fee interests' in terms of their duration. The court rejected the argument that these interests cannot be abandoned because they are 'fee interests,' clarifying that the term 'fee' in this context refers only to duration, not the nature of the property right. The court found substantial evidence to support abandonment by the Weber plaintiffs, who had explicitly rejected inheriting the corporate stock, but not for the other plaintiffs. Mere non-use for a long period is not sufficient to prove intent to abandon; there must be additional evidence that future use would be palpably unsound or other indication of intent to abandon. The court also rejected defendants' claims of adverse possession and laches, finding their surface use did not interfere with the mineral rights and that laches does not apply in quiet title actions where the defendant was not in adverse possession. The court remanded for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

Gerhard v. Stephens

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