The Texas Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Van Dyke v. Navigator Group, 668 S.W.3d 353 (Tex. 2023), touched off a wave of cases (and uncertainty) about how courts should read deeds of that certain “vintage” that used double fractions involving 1/8. Last month the Court issued its opinion in Clifton v. Johnson, No. 23-0671, 2026 Tex. LEXIS 211 (Tex. Mar. 13, 2026), and it’s the most important opinion on the issue since Van Dyke itself.
The short version is this: the Court reversed the El Paso Court of Appeals floating interpretation of a 1951 deed and put a fixed 1/128 royalty back in place. The bigger story is what the opinion says about when the Van Dyke presumption can be overcome, and what it signals about the presumed-grant doctrine going forward.
The 1951 Deed
The deed at the center of this case was executed in 1951 in Reeves County, Texas. The parties crossed out the typewritten title “Mineral Deed” and handwrote “Royalty Deed” in its place. The granting clause conveyed “an undivided one-one hundred and twenty-eighth (1/128) interest in and to all of the oil, gas and other minerals in and under” the land. A separate future-lease clause provided that grantees would receive no bonuses, no rentals, no executive rights, and would get “1/128 (1/16 of the usual 1/8 royalty)” out of any future lease production.
For nearly seventy years after the deed was executed, the grantees and their successors received a fixed 1/128 royalty without any dispute. Then in 2020, Johnson (a successor of the grantees) filed suit against the Clifton parties (successors of the grantors) seeking a declaratory judgment that the 1951 deed actually conveyed a floating 1/16 royalty interest. Both sides moved for summary judgment.
The trial court sided with the Cliftons and held the deed conveyed a fixed 1/128. Then while the appeal was pending, the Supreme Court handed down Van Dyke. The El Paso Court of Appeals applied Van Dyke, found the estate-misconception presumption triggered, and reversed: a floating 1/16. The Supreme Court took the case.
The Van Dyke Backdrop
To understand what the Court did in Clifton, you need a working understanding of the Van Dyke framework. The “estate-misconception doctrine” rests on the observation that mid-century Texas landowners commonly misunderstood their ownership position after signing an oil and gas lease. Because the standard lessor’s royalty was 1/8, many landowners mistakenly believed they’d retained only a 1/8 interest in their minerals. That confusion made its way into deeds. Parties would use 1/8 as a term of art (a placeholder for “total royalty interest”) rather than as an arithmetic fraction. The result was a generation of deeds with double fractions (like “1/2 of the usual 1/8 royalty”) that look like they’re expressing a fixed fraction of production but are actually expressing a share of whatever royalty gets negotiated in future leases.
Van Dyke formalized this into a rebuttable presumption. When you see a double fraction involving 1/8 in an instrument from this era, start with the presumption that 1/8 refers to the entire mineral estate and that the interest floats. The presumption can be overcome, but Van Dyke didn’t say much about what that takes. Clifton fills that gap.
What the Court Held
The Presumption Was Rebutted
Justice Young’s opinion describes Clifton as “the photographic negative of Van Dyke.” In Van Dyke, there was nothing in the deed’s text that pushed back against the floating interpretation. The double fraction sat there without any counterweight, and the presumption held. In Clifton, the opposite was true. The 1/128 figure appeared as a standalone operative fraction in the granting clause; no double fraction, just the number. Then in the future-lease clause, the deed used 1/128 again as the primary term, with “(1/16 of the usual 1/8 royalty)” appearing only as a parenthetical explanation of the math. The Court explained that the deed used a double fraction to “show its work.” The parenthetical shows how you get to 1/128. It didn’t replace 1/128 as the operative term.
The Court’s rule is this: if the textual provisions of the deed demonstrate that the double fraction was used as nothing more than an arithmetic expression, the presumption can be rebutted. Read the whole instrument, make all the provisions work together, and if the result is a consistent arithmetic value throughout, that’s your answer.
The Presumed-Grant Doctrine
The Court spent considerable time on the presumed-grant doctrine, even though it ultimately didn’t have to decide whether it applied. That’s worth noting, because the doctrine is likely going to matter a lot in future cases.
The presumed-grant doctrine operates entirely differently from the Van Dyke analysis. Where Van Dyke asks what the deed means, presumed grant asks what the parties actually did for decades afterward. To invoke it, you need to show: (1) a long-asserted, open claim adverse to the apparent owner; (2) nonclaim by the apparent owner; and (3) acquiescence by the apparent owner in the adverse claim.
Here, seventy years of uncontested fixed-royalty payments provided a strong factual foundation. The Court acknowledged that kind of history matters. But because the textual analysis of the deed resolved the matter, the Court didn’t have to reach whether the doctrine’s elements were conclusively satisfied.
Expect to see the presumed-grant doctrine argued aggressively in future floating royalty cases, particularly anywhere there’s a long payment history that cuts against the Van Dyke presumption.
The Bottom Line
Clifton v. Johnson is the most important refinement of Texas floating royalty jurisprudence since Van Dyke. Justice Young’s opinion makes clear that the Van Dyke presumption is a starting point, not a conclusion; and that a deed speaking consistently in fixed arithmetic terms throughout can overcome it.