Edmund Burke v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company Lamprecht v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company

• Decision Date: 22 June 1914
• Docket Number: No. 280,Nos. 279,280,No. 279,279,s. 279
• Parties: EDMUND BURKE v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY and the Kern Trading & Oil Company. J. I. LAMPRECHT and F. M. Aiken, Trustees, v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, the Kern Trading & Oil Company, and T. S. Minot
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

234 U.S. 669

34 S.Ct. 907

58 L.Ed. 1527

EDMUND BURKE

v SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY and the Kern Trading & Oil Company.

No. 279.

J. I. LAMPRECHT and F. M. Aiken, Trustees,

v SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, the Kern Trading &

Oil Company, and T. S. Minot.

No. 280.

Nos. 279, 280.

Argued January 13, 14, 1913.

Decided June 22, 1914.

[Syllabus from pages 669-671 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Frederic R. Kellogg, Roberts Walker, and Edmund Burke, in propria persona, for appellant in No. 279.

Messrs. D. J. Hinkley, T. H. Hogsett, and T. J. Butler for appellants in No. 280.

Messrs. Maxwell Evarts, Henry W. Clark, Gordon M. Buck, and A. A. Hoehling, Jr., for appellees.

Solicitors General Bullitt and Davis, Assistant Attorney General Knaebel, and Mr. B. D. Townsend for the United States.

Messrs. Charles W. Bunn and Charles Donnelly for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company.

Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the opinion of the court:

In 1910 Edmund Burke filed a bill in equity in the circuit court of the United States for the southern district of California, against the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the Kern Trading & Oil Company, and several individuals, wherein he sought a decree establishing certain rights claimed by him in five sections of land in Fresno county, California, and enjoining the defendants from asserting any right or interest therein. A cross bill was filed by J. I. Lamprecht and other individual defendants, and the two corporate defendants demurred to both bills. The demurrers were sustained and a decree was entered dismissing the bills, for reasons assigned in an opinion announced the same day in Roberts v. Southern P. Co. 186 Fed. 934. The complainant and cross complainants appealed to the circuit court of appeals, and it certified the case here under the Judicial Code, § 239 [36 Stat. at L. 1157, chap. 231, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1911, p. 228], for instruction upon designated questions of law.

According to the certificate, the bill alleged, in substance, that in 1892 the five sections were public lands and were located as placer mining claims under the mining laws of the United States, each location being preceded by a discovery of mineral within its limits; that on May 9, 1892, the railroad company, with knowledge of these locations, made application at the local land office to have the five sections, with others, patented to it under the land grant made to it by the act of July 27, 1866 (14 Stat. at L. 292, chap. 278, §§ 3, 4, 18), and the joint resolution of June 28, 1870 (16 Stat. at L. 382, No. 87), and did then corruptly cause one Madden, its land agent, to make and present at such land office, in support of such application, a false and fraudulent affidavit stating that the application contained a correct list of lands inuring to the railroad company under its grant, and that the listed lands were vacant, unappropriated, and not interdicted, mineral, or reserved lands; that no notice of such application was given to any of the placer claimants, and no hearing was had in the local office or in the Land Department with the purpose of determining the character of the lands; that on July 10, 1894, without any such investigation or determination, a patent was issued to the railroad company purporting to convey to it, among other lands, the five sections in controversy; that the patent contained a clause reading: 'Excluding and excepting all mineral lands should any such be found in the tracts aforesaid, but this exclusion and exception, according to the terms of the statute, shall not be construed to include coal and iron lands;' that the railroad company accepted the patent and caused it to be recorded in Fresno county; that, in virtue of the patent, the railroad company claims to own all the lands described therein, including the five sections; that in March, 1909, the original mineral claimants having failed to perform the required assessment or development work for the preceding year, the complainant and certain associates of his entered upon the five sections and relocated the same as placer mining claims under the mining laws of the United States, each of the new locations being preceded by a discovery of mineral within its limits; that the lands contain petroleum in commercial quantities, which makes them more valuable for mining than for agricultural purposes; that the complainant is the owner of an undivided one-tenth interest in the mining claims created by the new location; and that the oil company, although claiming as a lessee of the railroad company, is a mere instrument of the latter, being entirely owned, dominated, and controlled by it.

According to the certificate, the cross bill set forth substantially a like state of facts, sought the same relief, and also contained the following allegation: 'These cross complainants further say and show unto the court that the said Southern Pacific Railroad Company, with full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances herein stated and alleged, did, for itself, its successors and assigns forever, accept and assent to, and submit to, and agree to be bound by, each and all of the provisions, stipulations, terms, conditions, restrictions, limitations, exclusions, and reservations in said act and joint resolution, and in said patent, or either or any of them contained, and so accepting the same and assenting and submitting thereto, and agreeing to be bound thereby, did receive and accept said alleged patent, and cause the same to be recorded in the office of the recorder of the county of Fresno, and state of California, and that said defendant, Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and all persons claiming any interest in said lands or any part thereof, under or through it by virtue of said act of Congress and joint resolution, and said patent, or any or either of them, are bound by all of said provisions, stipulations, terms, conditions, restrictions, limitations, exclusions, exceptions, and reservations, and are in equity and in conscience estopped to resist or deny the binding force and effect of same or any part or any thereof.'

The questions propounded in the certificate are as follows:

'First. Did the said grant to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company include mineral lands which were known to be such at or prior to the date of the patent of July 10, 1894?

'Second. Does a patent to a railroad company under a grant which excludes mineral lands, as in the present case, but which is issued without any investigation upon the part of the officers of the Land Office or of the Department of the Interior as to the quality of the land, whether agricultural or mineral, and without hearing upon or determination of the quality of the lands, operate to convey lands which are thereafter ascertained to be mineral?

'Third. Is the reservation and exception contained in the grant in the patent to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company void and of no effect?

'Fourth. If the reservation of mineral lands as ex- pressed in the patent is void, then is the patent, upon a collateral attack, a conclusive and official declaration that the land is agricultural, and that all the requirements preliminary to the issuance of the patent have been complied with?

'Fifth. Is petroleum or mineral oil within the meaning of the term 'mineral' as it was used in said acts of Congress reserving mineral land from the railroad land grants?

'Sixth. Does the fact that the appellant was not in privity with the government in any respect at the time when the patent was issued to the railroad company prevent him from attacking the patent on the ground of fraud, error, or irregularity in the issuance thereof, as so alleged in the bill?

'Seventh. If the mineral exception clause was inserted in the patent with the consent of the defendant, Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and under an understanding and agreement between it and the officers of the Interior Department that said clause should be effective to keep in the United States title to such of the lands described in the patent as were in fact mineral, are the defendants, Southern Pacific Railroad Company and the Kern Trading & Oil Company, estopped to deny the validity of said clause?'

At the outset it is well to observe that this is not a suit by the government to cancel or annul a patent for fraud practised upon the land officers in its procurement, or for any fraudulent act, error of law, or mistake committed by them in issuing it (see United States v. Minor, 114 U. S. 233, 29 L. ed. 110, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 836; United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co. 125 U. S. 273, 31 L. ed. 747, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 850; United States v. Trinidad Coal & Coping Co. 137 U. S. 160, 34 L. ed. 640, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 57; Germania Iron Co. v. United States, 165 U. S. 379, 41 L. ed. 754, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 337); nor is it a suit to have one to whom a patent has issued declared a trustee for another who, at the time of its issue, had acquired such a right to the land as to entitle him to that form of equitable relief (see Silver v. Ladd, 7 Wall. 219, 228, 19 L. ed. 138, 141; Lee v Johnson, 116 U. S. 48, 29 L. ed. 570, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 249; Duluth & I. Range R. Co. v. Roy, 173 U. S. 587, 43 L. ed. 820, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 549; Svor v. Morris, 227 U. S. 524, 57 L. ed. 623, 33 Sup. Ct. Rep. 385). On the contrary, the suit is one wherein rights asserted under a patent are called in question by parties whose only claim to the land was initiated more than fourteen years after the date of the patent.

As the fifth question has been presented in separate briefs and the occasion for considering the other questions turns upon the answer to it, we take it up first. It is: 'Is petroleum or mineral oil within the meaning of the term 'mineral' as it was used in said acts of Congress reserving mineral land from the railroad land grants?'

This granting act, like several others of that period, expressly excluded from its operation 'all mineral...