Hysaw v. Dawkins

Ethel Hysaw's 1947 will devised each of her three children an undivided one-third of an undivided one-eighth royalty interest across three tracts of land, and separately provided that if Ethel sold any royalty interests before her death, each child would receive one-third of the remainder of the unsold royalty. Decades later, the successors to one child, Inez Foote (defendants), negotiated a one-fifth royalty on the tract Inez had received and claimed the will granted each child only a floating one-twenty-fourth royalty (one-third of one-eighth), subject to increase based on whatever rate they individually negotiated, entitling them to one-third of that higher one-fifth rate on their own tract alone. The successors to the other two children, Dorothy Burris and Howard Hysaw (plaintiffs), argued Ethel intended each child to receive an equal, fixed one-third share of the total royalties from all three tracts combined; the trial court agreed with the Dorothy/Howard successors, finding "one-eighth" was just period-typical industry shorthand for the entire royalty (since all oil and gas royalties were one-eighth when the will was written), but the court of appeals reversed in favor of the mechanical floating-fraction reading, and the Dorothy/Howard successors appealed.