In March, we posted about Dundics v. Eric Petroleum Corp., a decision by Ohio’s Seventh District Court of Appeals ruling that landmen were required to obtain real estate broker’s licenses in order to sue for compensation for brokering deals between landowners and oil and gas companies. Today, the Supreme Court of Ohio agreed to review the following proposition of law:
Oil and gas land professionals, who help obtain oil and gas leases mostly for sophisticated oil and gas development businesses, should not be required to be licensed real estate brokers. Ohio’s statutory licensing requirements for real estate brokers, set forth in R.C. 4735.01 et seq., were not intended to cover oil and gas land professionals, because they perform substantially different services than residential or commercial real estate agents and their activity is limited to a very small, specific area relative to real estate rights.
We will keep you posted as this case develops.