Magnolia Petroleum Company appeals from a judgment quieting title in the Commissioners of the Land Office of the State of Oklahoma as the owner of the fee simple title and in The Carter Oil Company as the owner of oil and gas leases executed to it by the Commissioners covering land forfeited to the Commissioners by defaulted certificate of purchase holders. Magnolia counterclaimed to the quiet title action instituted by Carter, interpleading the Commissioners as third-party defendants, contending that as the record owner of one-half of the minerals under the forfeited land without notice of the forfeiture, it was entitled to have its title quieted as against Carter and the Commissioners.
The controverted property is part of the original Oklahoma school land grant placed under the control of the Commissioners. Enabling Act, June 16, 1906, c. 3335, § 7, 34 Stat. 272; Okla.Const. Art. 6, § 32. By mesne conveyances B. J. Ebenkamp and Willis Tooley obtained equitable title to the land from the Commissioners, evidenced by Certificates of Purchase. The State retained legal title to secure the balance of the unpaid purchase price with the understanding that a patent would issue upon payment of the full purchase price and that forfeiture would result from failure to make annual deferred payments. Title 64 O.S. § 187, R.L.1910, § 7152; Laws 1916, ch. 36, p. 96, § 2; Laws 1933, ch. 91, p. 163, § 7; Stevens v. Patten, 174 Okl. 582, 50 P.2d 1106, Ch. 57, S.L.Okla. 1923-24; Dale v. Deal, 159 Okl. 111, 14 P.2d 363.
As holders or owners of certificates of purchase, Ebenkamp and Tooley executed mineral deeds to an undivided one-half of the minerals under the land, ultimately assigned to Magnolia by mesne conveyances dated June 26, 1930. These deeds were recorded in Beaver County where the land was located.
Thereafter, upon default by Tooley, the Commissioners on September 16, 1935, served notice of cancellation upon Tooley and his lien holder; and on May *331, 1941, the Commissioners served notice of cancellation upon Ebenkamp and his party in possession, as provided by Ch. 57, S.L.1923-24, §§ 1 and 2. No notice of cancellation of the certificates of purchase was served upon Magnolia, and it had no actual knowledge of cancellation until Carter requested quit-claim deeds covering the minerals. Magnolia refused to quit claim on the grounds that it had claimed title to the minerals since 1930, and this quiet title action ensued.
The Trial Court held that the mineral deeds executed by certificate holders Ebenkamp and Tooley, not being approved by the Commissioners of the Land Office in accordance with § 191, 0. S. Title 64, R.L.1910, § 7156; Laws 1910-11, ch. 44, p. 87 § 1; Laws 1915, ch. 210 § 8, and the terms of the certificates of purchase, did not convey to or Vest in Magnolia any right, title or interest in the lands as against the State of Oklahoma; and not having acquired any interest in the lands, Magnolia was not entitled to notice of cancellation under §§ 1 and 2 of Ch. 57, S.L. of Okla., 1923-24. It concluded therefore that cancellation of the certificates, being in conformity with the applicable statutes, operated to forfeit all right, title and interest of the certificate holders and any and all persons claiming by, through or under them, including the Magnolia Petroleum Company; that upon such forfeiture the State of Oklahoma was revest-ed with the fee simple title to the lands in question free and clear of any interest of the certificate holders and Magnolia, and that Carter acquired valid oil and gas leases from the State of Oklahoma after forfeiture.
§ 191 O.S. Title 64, under which the original certificates of purchase were issued, provides in material part:
“Any purchaser of lands under the provisions of this act shall have the right to transfer or assign all his rights, title and interest in and to such lands * * * ; provided, before delivery of patent, such assignment, to be valid, shall be duly recorded in a proper book, kept for that purpose by the Commissioners of the Land Office; * * *. Upon the sale and transfer of the interest of a holder of a certificate of purchase in and to the land covered thereby, if the same is approved by the Commissioners of the Land Office, and upon the payment of any principal or interest due to date of transfer, and the surrendering of the certificate of purchase transferred, the Commissioners of the Land Office shall issue and deliver to the transferee a new certificate of purchase upon the execution by the transferee of a new certificate of purchase note for the deferred payments, and the note, executed by the holder of the certificate of purchase transferred, shall be canceled and surrendered to him.”
On the reverse side of the certificates issued in pursuance of the statute appears a transfer certificate to be signed by the transferors showing that they do “assign * * * all of (their) right, title and interest” in the lands described in the Certificate, “said transfer and sale being made subject to the approval and acceptance of the Commissioners of the Land Office of the State of Oklahoma.”
In construing the statute as applying to a conveyance of the mineral interests by the certificate holders and requiring the approval of the Commissioners, the Trial Court construed the critical word “all” as including any part of the interest of the certificate holders; and thus concluded that “approval and acceptance of the Commissioners of the Land Office” was a prerequisite to the validity of the conveyance of a lesser interest than the whole. The Trial Court’s conclusions in this respect are buttressed by evidence in the record to the effect that for at least seven or eight years preceding the trial it had been the policy of the Commissioners of the Land Office not to recognize the validity of a conveyance of any interest in the lands covered by a certificate of purchase unless the same was accepted and approved by the Com*4missioners of the Land Office in accordance with the terms of the certificate.
Absent any other authoritative interpretation of the state statute, we should of course be prone to give great weight to the administrative interpretation, Great Northern Life Ins. Co. v. Read, 10 Cir., 1943, 136 F.2d 44, reversed on another point, 322 U.S. 47, 64 S.Ct. 873, 88 L.Ed. 1121; Cities Service Gas Co. v. Peerless Oil & Gas Co., 203 Okl. 35, 220 P.2d 279, 290, especially in view of the affirmation of the learned Trial Court. But we think the interpretation placed upon this statute by recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma renders the administrative interpretation of the statute untenable.
Berryman v. Producers Corp., 206 Okl. 24, 240 P.2d 1111 and Johnson v. Farmers’ Union Co-op Royalty Co., 205 Okl. 478, 238 P.2d 831 leave no doubt that § 191 O.S. Title 64 is applicable only to a conveyance by a certificate holder of “ ‘all his rights, title and interest’ in the land, which is equivalent to an assignment of the certificate of purchase”, Ber-ryman v. Producers Corp., supra, 240 P.2d at page 1113, and that the statute is inapplicable to a conveyance of less than all of his right, title and interest in the land; that the recording of a conveyance of a mineral interest by a certificate holder in the county where the land is located is constructive notice and binding as against all those claiming under reissued certificates of purchase after assignment or forfeiture. And this is so although the mineral conveyance was not approved or accepted by the Commissioners of the Land Office as provided in the statute and the certificates of purchase.
Indeed Appellees concede as much. They suggest, however that the Commissioners of the Land Office were not a party to the proceedings in either the Johnson or the Berryman case, and earn•estly contend that the construction placed upon § 191 in those cases was not in- , tended to apply with binding effect on the State of Oklahoma.
True, the Commissioners of the'Land Office were not parties to the proceedings in the Johnson and Berryman cases, but we think there can be no doubt that the rule of those cases has equal application to the Commissioners. To hold otherwise would result in the anomalous and wholly untenable situation in which one claiming under a reissued certificate would have good title against all in the chain of title except the source. We cannot believe that the Oklahoma court intended any such incongruous statutory construction.
If § 191 leaves a certificate holder free to convey less than all of his interest in the land without the approval of the Commissioners there can be no warrant or authority for saying that the approval of the Commissioners is requisite to the validity of a conveyance which is valid against all other holders under the certificate issued by the Commissioners. In other words, if the statute is inapplicable to the conveyance, it can grant no authority in the Commissioners to require their consent and approval therefor, and a record of such conveyance in the county where the land is located is constructive notice to the Commissioners as well as all other parties. We are constrained to hold that Magnolia acquired an undivided one-half interest in the minerals under the lands involved here and that the recording of the mineral deeds in the county where the land is located is constructive notice to all parties, including the Commissioners of the Land Office.
The question remains whether the cancellation of the certificates of purchase without notice to Magnolia operated to divest it of its mineral interests in the lands covered by such certificates.
Section 1 of Ch. 57, S.L.Okla., 1923-24 provides in substance that when any person, firm or corporation holding a certificate of purchase to any public lands in the State of Oklahoma shall be in default of any annual deferred payments due the State for a period of two years, the Commissioners of the Land Office shall cause notice to be given to *5“all delinquent purchasers, or holders or owners of certificates of purchase,” that if the delinquent deferred payments are not paid within ninety days from the date of service of such notice, the Commissioners of the Land Office shall declare “all rights obtained by the purchaser or transferee under said sale and the certificate of purchase issued thereon, forfeited to the State.” Section 2 of the act provides in material part that, “The service of the notice provided for in the foregoing section shall be made by registered mail, to the record owner, or lien holder of record and to the person or persons in possession thereof.”
The Trial Court construed these two sections together to mean that the State of Oklahoma was required to give notice only to the holders or owners of certificates of purchase and that no notice of cancellation of such certificates of purchase was required to be given to the Magnolia Petroleum Company.
Magnolia takes the position on appeal that the “record owner” referred to in § 2 on whom service of notice provided for in the foregoing section shall be made, is to be taken in its ordinary accepted meaning, and when so construed necessarily includes the Magnolia Petroleum Company whose interests were duly recorded in the county where the land was situated; and that any other construction would amount to a taking of its property without due process of law. In short, Magnolia would construe the words “record owner” in § 2 as referring to someone in addition to the delinquent purchasers, holders or owners of certificates of purchase in § 1.
Invoking the rule of ejusdem generis, Appellees say that § 2 merely provides for the service of the notice to be given in § 1 and that the general term “record owner” in § 2 should not be construed to enlarge or amplify the specific class designated as purchasers or holders or owners of certificates of purchase in § 1; that as a cognate term of those words, it should be confined to those persons so designated. It is also said that as crus-tees of vast acreage held for the benefit of the school children of Oklahoma, the Commissioners of the Land Office were not intended to be burdened with the search of the records to determine outstanding interests and notifying all of the holders thereof; that these considerations prompted the legislature to provide an expeditious quasi-judicial procedure for the cancellation of the certificates of delinquent certificate holders or owners. The Commissioners call attention to the fact that they conveyed no interest to Magnolia and received no consideration therefor; that,Magnolia took the mineral interests subject to the statutes governing the issuance and cancellation of the certificates of purchase, and all Magnolia acquired was a defeasible equitable interest subject to forfeiture with the cancellation of the certificates of purchase; that the burden was upon Magnolia to see that the payments were made by the certificate holders in order to protect their interests.
It is significant to note that in 1948 the Oklahoma legislature amended §§ 1 and 2, Ch. 57, S.L.Okla., 1923-24 to consolidate the two sections and to provide for service of notice of forfeiture upon, “The lawful owner of a certificate of purchase contract, his heirs, executors, administrators, devisees, trustees and assigns.” Laws 1943, p. 157, § 5. Under the present act Magnolia would undoubtedly be entitled to service of notice of cancellation, and the Commissioners of the Land Office would thus be required to search the records. The amendment of the statute to require service on the assignees of the holders or owners of the certificates of purchase is susceptible of a legislative recognition of the failure of the prior legislation to so provide. Sutherland Statutory Construction, 3rd Edition, § 1930 and § 5110, with cases cited, 50 Am.Jur., Statutes, § 275, p. 262. It might also be taken as a legislative recognition of a neglected duty to accord due process of law to the owner of a vested interest in the forfeited lands. 11 Am. Jur., Constitutional Law, § 151, pp. 832-3.
*6The use of the words “record owner” in § 2 to refer to the persons on whom service provided for in § 1 shall be served, admittedly “inept”, is sufficiently ambiguous to justify resort to extraneous considerations for the ascertainment of their meaning. 50 Am.Jur., Statutes, § 225, pp. 204-6; Sutherland Statutory Construction, 3rd Edition, §§ 4502-3. And we should have no great difficulty agreeing with the contentions of the . Appellees and the construction placed upon the words “record owner” by the Trial Court were it not for the serious constitutional considerations of due process which that construction poses.
The Trial Court had no difficulty with ’ due process because of its conviction ' that Magnolia acquired no property inter- ' est to constitutionally protect. But having decided that Magnolia did acquire a vested property right, we are now faced with the necessity of determining whether a taking of that right without notice can be reconciled with due process of law. ,
In this posture we are brought to the salutary canon "of construction under which courts faced with two constructions of a statute, one of which would comport with its constitutionality, the other of which would cast doubt, the court should always presume that the legislature intended the observance of all constitutional requirements. This is especially true where vested property rights are sought to be forfeited under the statute to be construed. 11 Am.Jur. Constitutional Law, § 97, pp. 725-32, with cases cited in extensive footnotes; Merrill on Notice, § 543, p. 562; Foster v. Marshall, 141 Okl. 246, 284 P. 882.
The procedure provided in the statutes for the cancellation of certificates and the forfeiture of equitable interests evidenced thereby, although born of expediency and nurtured by the administrative hand, is nevertheless quasi-judicial in its character, Dale v. Deal, 159 Okl. 111, 14 P.2d 363; Wilhite v. Cruce, 70 Okl. 70, 172 P. 962; and the constitutional requirements for procedural due process are no less exacting. When “the administrative body acts judicially, notice and an opportunity for hearing are indispensable to due process,” Merrill on Notice, § 517, p. 506; and the spirit of the law requires that all doubts concerning due process should be resolved in favor of notice. Merrill on Notice, § 543, p. 562.
It is no distortion to construe the words “record owner” as meaning all parties having an interest of record. It comports with procedural due process; it respects the time-honored rule against forfeitures; and we are constrained to so construe it.
Appellees also deny Magnolia’s claim of right in the property on the ground that the Commissioners have adversely held the property for the statutory period of fifteen years. 12 O.S.A. § 93(4). It was stipulated that the State of Oklahoma caused the controverted lands to be shown upon the tax rolls of the county where the land was located as its land and collected and retained the rents and profits therefrom. But the title to the minerals has been severed as a separate estate and the Trial Court found that they had not been developed for oil and gas purposes. Mere possession of the surface by the State without assertion of dominion over the minerals does not constitute adverse possession of the minerals. Noble v. Kahn, 206 Okl. 13, 240 P.2d 757, 35 A.L.R.2d 119.
The judgment is reversed and remanded with directions to accord Magnolia the right of redemption.