Clackamas County, Ore. v. McKay

• Decision Date: 30 April 1954
• Docket Number: No. 11844.,11844.
• Citation: 219 F.2d 479
• Parties: CLACKAMAS COUNTY, ORE., a Political Subdivision of the State of Oregon, Appellant, v. Douglas McKAY, Secretary of the Interior, and Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

219 F.2d 479 (1954)

CLACKAMAS COUNTY, ORE., a Political Subdivision of the State of Oregon, Appellant, v. Douglas McKAY, Secretary of the Interior, and Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture, Appellees.

No. 11844.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued November 25, 1953.

Decided April 30, 1954.

Petition for Rehearing Denied October 21, 1954.

Judgment Vacated April 18, 1955.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Messrs. A. W. Lafferty, Portland, Oregon and Richard L. Merrick, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Mr. Harold S. Harrison, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. Roger P. Marquis, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellees.

Mr. Leo A. Rover, U. S. Atty., Mr. Lewis A. Carroll, Asst. U. S. Atty., and Mr. William J. Peck, Asst. U. S. Atty. at the time the brief was filed, Washington, D. C., entered appearances for appellees.

Before EDGERTON, WILBUR K. MILLER and PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judges.

Judgment Vacated April 18, 1955. See 75 S.Ct. 599.

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge.

This is a civil action brought in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by Clackamas County, Oregon, on behalf of itself and seventeen other so-called land grant counties in that State, seeking a mandamus directed to the Secretary of the Interior and an injunction to the Secretary of Agriculture.

The controversy concerns the proceeds from the sale of timber from 472,000 acres of public land. This is part of a large tract which has been the subject matter of several acts of Congress and has also been involved in other litigation. There is now on deposit in the Treasury of the United States some $5,000,000 in cash from the sales of the timber on these 472,000 acres. Our appellant, Clackamas County, contends that these moneys should be distributed to it and the other seventeen counties under a specific mandate of the Congress, that the Secretary of the Interior fails and refuses to make such distribution, and that the Secretary of Agriculture is a party to an interdepartmental agreement with the Secretary of the Interior that these proceeds should be withheld from distribution. The Secretaries say (1) that this is a suit against the United States, to which it has not consented, and (2) that the actions sought to be compelled involve discretionary matters which may not be controlled by mandatory injunction. The controversy has a long history.

Because this opinion will be lengthy, we have indicated its subdivisions by the use of numbers as follows: (I) the land grant acts of Congress, the Joint Resolution of 1908, and the Supreme Court decision in 1915; (II) the 1916 Act of Congress; (III) the lawsuit in the District Court of the United States for the District of Oregon, United States v. Oregon & C. R. R.; (IV) the 1926 and 1937 Acts of Congress; (V) the present controversy and the questions presented; (VI) the doctrine of sovereign immunity and the rule as to judicial compulsion of ministerial duties of administrative officials; (VII) the opinion of the Supreme Court in Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Corp.; (VIII) a further discussion of sovereign immunity; (IX) authorities cited by the appellee Secretaries; (X) whether the actions of the Secretaries were discretionary; (XI) the views of our dissenting judge; (XII) conclusion as to the Secretary of the Interior; (XIII) conclusion as to the Secretary of Agriculture; and (XIV) directions to the District Court.

I

In 1866 Congress made to the California and Oregon Railroad Company a grant of public lands, consisting of every odd-numbered alternate section to the amount of twenty alternate sections per mile (ten on each side) of the railroad line.¹ The Act provided that, when any of these sections should be found to have been occupied or otherwise disposed of, other lands should be selected by the railroad in lieu thereof. These other lands, which came to be known as "lieu lands" or "indemnity lands", were to be in odd-numbered sections not more than ten miles beyond the limits of the primary grant.

In 1869 Congress amended the granting act so as to provide, among other things, that the lands granted should be sold to actual settlers only, in quantities not greater than one-quarter section to one purchaser and for a price not exceeding $2.50 per acre.² The railroad proceeded to violate this latter proviso, making sales of from 1,000 to 20,000 acres to one purchaser at prices ranging from $5 to $40 an acre and, in one instance, a sale of 45,000 acres at $7 an acre to a single purchaser.³

The matter came to the attention of Congress, and in 1908 a Joint Resolution was adopted directing the Attorney General to institute court proceedings to protect the rights of the United States, including a claim that the lands granted to the railroad had been forfeited to the United States by reason of violations of the terms of the granting acts.⁴ The suit was brought and reached the United States Supreme Court.⁵ The Court held against forfeiture but held that the railroads should be enjoined from any disposition of the lands until Congress should have an opportunity to provide for their disposition "and at the same time secure to the defendants the railroads and their assignees all the value the granting acts conferred upon the railroads."⁶

II

Pursuant to that opinion of the Court the Congress in 1916 passed an act,⁷ which referred to the foregoing circumstances in a series of "Whereases" and provided that the title to so much of the lands granted to the railroad as had not been sold prior to July 1, 1913, was thereby revested in the United States. The Congress then proceeded, in the Act, to direct what should be done with the land thus revested. It provided that the Secretary of the Interior, "in cooperation with the Secretary of Agriculture, or otherwise," should classify "said lands" into (1) power-site lands, (2) timber lands, and (3) agricultural lands; that the Secretary should sell the timber on the timber lands for cash; and that the non-mineral agricultural lands should be subject to entry and sale under the homestead laws. The Congress then dealt with the problem of compensating the railroad, which it was required to do by the Supreme Court ruling. The Act authorized and directed the Attorney General to institute a suit against the railroad "to have determined" the amount of moneys which had been received by the railroad on account of any of "said granted lands" and which should be charged against the railroad as part of the "full value" secured under the granting acts as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The Act repeatedly used the word "determination" in describing the contemplated action by the court. The Congress then dealt with the disposition of the money which it anticipated would be derived from the revested lands. The Act provided that all moneys received on account of "said lands and timber" should be deposited in the Treasury of the United States in a special fund to be designated "The Oregon and California land-grant fund",⁸ "which fund shall be disposed of in the following manner: * * *." Then followed a formula for the computation of the parts to be distributed. It provided for the payment from the fund of the amounts due the railroad and certain lienholders and for certain accumulated taxes. It then provided for the payment of the annual balances of the fund, in stated percentages, to the state treasurers of the states in which the lands were located, to the treasurers of the counties in which the lands were situated, and to the reclamation fund of the United States, the remainder to become part of the general fund in the Treasury of the United States. The statute provided: "The payments herein authorized shall be made to the treasurers of the States and counties, respectively, by the Treasurer of the United States, upon the order of the Secretary of the Interior, as soon as may be after the close of each fiscal year during which the moneys were received: * * *."⁹

The philosophy and purpose of the statute are plain upon a reading of the congressional debate which preceded its enactment. The original land grant statutes were designed to promote the development of the West and, in this case, of the Oregon territory. The building of the railroad was conducive to the migration of people and goods. The railroads through sale of the land were supplied with funds, and the condition that the land be sold to settlers in small parcels and at a cheap price was to serve the cause of extensive settlement. The action of the railroad in selling the land to large purchasers, chiefly to lumber interests, frustrated this design. According to the Representatives in Congress from Oregon, the people in that State were bitter in blaming the Federal Government for inaction in this situation for over fifty years. Moreover, the proposed revesting of title in the United States would remove from the tax rolls of the State these huge tracts of land, theretofore taxable, and in this transition the schools and roads of the State would suffer. Congress recognized the justice of these claims, and it was for this purpose that it directed a division of the proceeds from the lands among the states, the counties, and the Federal Government. The debate was long and vigorous, every section of the bill being discussed. The Oregon Representatives proposed an amendment which would have given Oregon 80 per cent of the proceeds from the land instead of the 50 per cent which the bill provided; but that amendment was rejected on a rollcall vote. The debate in the House appears in Volume 53 of the Congressional Record at pages 8579-8619 and 8648-49.

III

The lawsuit authorized by the 1916 statute was brought by the United States as plaintiff against the Oregon and California Railroad Company in the District Court of the United States for the District of Oregon. It was a suit for an accounting. The theory of the Act, as ...