Pa. Court Looks to 1889 Case Law in Remanding Dispute Over Assigned Lease

PITTSBURGH — A federal judge has declined to read recent Pennsylvania appellate court holdings as barring all claims against the original, in-state lessee once a gas and oil lease is assigned and, instead, applied an 1889 precedent in finding a lack of diversity and remanding a lease dispute to its originating state court.

Judge Mark R. Hornak of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania said in his Aug. 1 order that while decisions “may be a harbinger that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will soon declare that the ‘fee simple determinable’ attributes of an oil and gas …