CARROLL v. WORLEY

CARROLL v. WORLEY
1927 OK 256
260 P. 3
127 Okla. 173
Case Number: 17642
Decided: 09/13/1927
Supreme Court of Oklahoma

CARROLL
v.
WORLEY.

Syllabus

¶0 1. Appeal and Error--Successive Appeals--Law of the Case--Scope of Review. Upon successive appeals of same case to this court, the law, as determined and stated by this court upon the legal questions presented on each appeal, becomes and is the law of the case on those questions in all subsequent proceedings, either in the trial court or in this court, and where the facts are practically without dispute and substantially the same on each successive appeal, this court upon the instant appeal will not re-examine such questions as were formerly determined, but will consider only such questions as were reserved in the former decisions and those which are newly presented.
2. Appeal and Error--Questions of Fact--Conclusiveness of Findings. Where questions of fact are presented to the trial court in the absence of a jury, the court's finding and judgment thereon will not be disturbed on appeal where there is any evidence reasonably tending to support the same.

Sam K. Sullivan, Neal A. Sullivan, and R. J. Shive, for plaintiff in error.
Woodward & Westhafer, N.E. McNeill, and David L. Carter, for defendant in error.

PHELPS, J.

¶1 Evelyn Carroll, plaintiff in error, owned an oil and gas mining lease covering certain real estate located in Kay county. She entered into a contract with H. F. Worley, defendant in error, by the terms of which she agreed to give him exclusive agency to procure and negotiate a drilling contract for the purpose of developing said lease, such agency to extend for a period of 6O days, and his compensation therefor to be a specified interest in the lease. Worley claimed to have procured a contract meeting all the requirements and to have presented it to plaintiff in error, who refused to accept and sign the same. He then brought suit in the district court of Kay county praying judgment requiring her to convey to him such interest in said lease. Judgment was rendered in his favor, and Mrs. Carroll comes here on appeal.

¶2 This is the second time this case has reached this court. In the first trial in the district court a demurrer was sustained to Worley's evidence, from which he appealed, and in reversing the judgment of the district court, the opinion of this court settled practically all questions involved except questions of fact to be determined at a subsequent trial. (Worley v. Carroll, 110 Okla. 199, 237 P. 120.) The petition in error contains eight assignments of error, but they are presented under two propositions, the first of which is that the contract sought to be enforced is null and void for the reason that it had never been approved by the Secretary of the Interior, the lands covered by said lease being Indian lands. This question, however, was fully briefed in the former appeal, and, in an exhaustive opinion by Mr. Commissioner Lyons, was decided adversely to the contention made here by plaintiff in error. This counsel admit on page 50 of their brief, but insist that that opinion was wrong and should be overruled.