## Facts

- On September 19, 1874, Galen Roberts executed a written instrument concerning coal rights beneath his land in Wise County, Virginia.
- The instrument repeatedly used lease terminology, followed the lease form commonly used under Virginia law at the time, and set a fixed term of 99 years (ending in 1973).
- It also contained deed-like words (including “grant and convey”), which the heirs relied on to argue the document permanently severed and conveyed the coal estate.
- The instrument contemplated royalty-style compensation (reported as a per-ton payment) tied to coal extraction.
- Roberts had entered other mineral instruments that more clearly effected a full mineral severance, supporting the argument that he knew how to convey a permanent mineral estate when he intended to do so.
- Coal was not mined on the property until the mid-1940s, long after the 1874 instrument was executed.
- The heirs asserted that coal was mined without the royalty payments they believed were owed under the 1874 instrument and sought to recover alleged unpaid royalties and related relief.
- The case had a long procedural history, including a Supreme Court of Virginia decision in 1988 addressing procedural issues (including whether additional heirs could be added without being barred by limitations), after which the matter returned to the Wise County Circuit Court for a merits determination.
- In 1992, the circuit court tried and decided the substantive dispute over what legal interest the 1874 instrument created and what that meant for the heirs’ claimed royalty and ownership rights.

## Issues

1. Did the September 19, 1874 instrument create a permanent severance and conveyance of the coal estate (a mineral deed), or did it create only a 99-year coal lease?
2. If the instrument was a lease, did any ownership or royalty rights claimed by Roberts’s heirs continue after the lease term expired in 1973?

## Decision

- The court held that the 1874 instrument, read as a whole and in its historical context, was a coal lease for a fixed 99-year term—not a deed conveying a perpetual coal estate.
- The court concluded that deed-like words such as “grant and convey” did not override the instrument’s dominant lease features, including its express 99-year duration and lease structure.
- Because the court classified the instrument as a lease, the rights it created were limited to the lease term and did not continue after the lease expired in 1973.
- The court entered judgment against the heirs on their theory that the instrument left them with a continuing, severed ownership interest in the coal (and corresponding continuing royalty rights) beyond the lease term.

## Legal Principles

- The character of a mineral-related instrument is determined by reading the document as a whole, not by isolating a single phrase.
- Where an instrument uses lease forms and terminology and sets a definite term, courts generally construe it as creating a leasehold interest rather than a perpetual mineral conveyance.
- Deed-like words of transfer may appear in lease instruments and do not, by themselves, convert a term lease into a fee-simple conveyance of minerals.
- Evidence that the grantor used clearer language in other transactions to accomplish a true mineral severance can support construing an ambiguous document as a lease rather than a permanent conveyance.
- A fixed-term mineral lease creates time-limited contractual and property rights; absent clear language creating a perpetual estate, those rights end when the term ends.

## Conclusion

In *Heirs of Galen Roberts v. Coal Processing Corp.*, the Wise County Circuit Court held that Roberts’s 1874 coal instrument was a 99-year lease, not a mineral deed severing and conveying the coal estate in perpetuity; as a result, any rights under the instrument ended when the lease term expired in 1973, and the heirs were not entitled to continuing coal ownership or royalty recovery based on a perpetual-severance theory.


Heirs of Galen Roberts v. Coal Processing Corp., 27 Va. Cir. 178, 1992 Va. Cir. LEXIS 168 (1992)