Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed on appeal a hunting club’s ownership of a tract of land in its entirety—including both surface and subsurface rights—over the objections of a prior owner’s heirs. In Woodhouse Hunting Club v. Hoyt, Case No. 327 MDA 2017, the court weighed in for the second time in recent years on the concept of “title washing,” a creation of early 19th century property tax law with modern implications. The question addressed in Woodhouse was whether a tax sale effectuated in 1902 extinguished a prior reservation of subsurface rights and granted the entire property at issue to the purchaser.

The court’s holding in Woodhouse closely follows its 2016 decision in Herder Spring Hunting Club v. Keller, 143 A.3d 358 (2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 641 (2017). The question before the court in Herder Spring was likewise whether the county’s sale of property pursuant to unpaid taxes extinguished a prior reservation of the property’s subsurface rights and merged them with the property’s surface estate. The hunting club had filed an action to quiet title in 2008 against the heirs of prior owners, who claimed they retained ownership of the property’s subsurface oil, gas and mineral rights; this action was presumably spurred by the discovery of gas-bearing Marcellus Shale under the property, and a desire to control oil and gas rights to it. In its lengthy opinion reaffirming the Superior Court’s ruling in favor of the hunting club, the Herder Spring court explored the history of Pennsylvania’s land taxation system and found that the 1935 tax sale had extinguished the Kellers’ subsurface rights. They had merged into the purchaser’s estate.