Marketable Title Act: Ohio Supreme Court Clarifies Distinction Between General and Specific References

By: Steven R. R. Anderson

Under Ohio’s Marketable Title Act (the “MTA”), an unbroken chain of title for a period of 40 years establishes record marketable title to real property. This means that interests in the property that predate the root of title — such as, for example, old mineral reservations — are generally extinguished, unless they fit within certain statutory exceptions.

One such exception occurs when the interest is referenced in the documents that make up the record marketable title. But not every reference is sufficient to preserve an old interest. As the Ohio Supreme Court previously detailed in Blackstone v. Moore, 2018-Ohio-4959, a reference may be either general or specific. Under the MTA, a specific reference preserves the interest. A general reference, on the other hand, does not, unless it contains “specific identification…of a recorded title transaction which creates such…interest.”[1]

The question facing the Ohio Supreme Court in the recently decided case Erickson v. Morrison, 2021-Ohio-746, was whether a reference to a mineral reservation containing neither the volume and page of the original reservation, nor the date of the original reservation, nor the name of the owner of the reserved rights, was general or specific under the test it laid out in Blackstone. The Court concluded that the reference was, nonetheless, specific.

In reaching its decision, the Court clarified its view of the difference between a general reference and a specific one. A general reference is one that contains “vague, boilerplate language excepting any reservations that may—or may not—exist.”[2] For example, the reference “subject to all easements, reservations, and restrictions of record” would be considered general.

Facing the Court in Erickson, however, was the reference "[e]xcepting and reserving therefrom all coal, gas, and oil with the right of said first parties, their heirs and assigns, at any time to drill and operate for oil and gas and to mine all coal". The Court held that this reference, notwithstanding its failure to include any of the identifying information listed above, is “a specific, identifiable reservation of mineral rights recited throughout [the] chain of title using the same language as the recorded title transaction that created it.”[3] Being a specific reference, therefore, the mineral reservation was preserved under the MTA.

Landowners should take note, as this decision provides the clearest guidance yet on how Ohio’s courts will treat mineral reservations under the MTA going forward.

Read the full opinion here.

[1] O.R.C. 5301.49(A).

[2] Id. at ¶ 32.

[3] Id.