Facts
- Willetts Wood Products Company originally owned land in Concordia Parish and the standing timber on it.
- After foreclosure and subsequent conveyances, ownership became severed: Concordia Land and Timber Company owned the land, and Willetts retained title to the standing timber.
- The instruments preserving Willetts’s timber ownership did not specify any time limit to cut and remove the timber.
- Concordia sued to have a court fix a reasonable period for removal and to have any timber left after that period belong to Concordia.
- The district court fixed a four-year removal period running from its judgment and ordered that timber not removed within that time would vest in Concordia.
- Willetts appealed, arguing the court lacked authority to impose a time limit and that its timber title could not be cut off in this manner.
Issues
- When a timber severance instrument is silent on time for removal, may a court fix a reasonable removal period at the landowner’s request and award unremoved timber to the landowner after that period expires?
- Is the timber owner’s interest co-equal with the landowner’s estate (permitting indefinite retention of timber on the land), or subordinate so that the landowner may compel timely removal?
Decision
- The Louisiana Supreme Court held that, when the agreement is silent as to time, a court may fix a reasonable period for removal, and the landowner may demand that such a period be judicially fixed.
- The court rejected the contention that the timber right could burden the land indefinitely.
- The court affirmed the four-year period as reasonable.
- The court amended the judgment to make the four-year period run from the date the appellate judgment became final (not from the date of the trial court judgment).
- Judgment was affirmed as amended; timber remaining after the period would belong to Concordia.
Legal Principles
- When a contract or instrument creating a right to remove standing timber does not fix a time for removal, the landowner may demand that a definite, reasonable period be fixed by the court.
- A timber right created without a removal term is not treated as a perpetual right to maintain timber on another’s land.
- The timber owner’s interest is subordinate to the landowner’s interest to the extent necessary to prevent indefinite impairment of the land’s use; after expiration of the court-fixed period, title to remaining standing timber may vest in the landowner.
- When a removal period is fixed by judgment, fairness may require the period to run from the finality of the judgment to avoid shortening the time by the duration of appellate proceedings.
Conclusion
The court held that silence in a timber severance instrument as to removal time permits a court, at the landowner’s request, to set a reasonable removal deadline and to vest unremoved timber in the landowner after the deadline, and it required the period to run from the finality of the appellate judgment.