Beley v. Naphtaly

• Decision Date: 28 February 1898
• Docket Number: No. 180,180
• Citation: 42 L.Ed. 775,18 S.Ct. 354,169 U.S. 353
• Parties: BELEY et al. v. NAPHTALY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

169 U.S. 353

18 S.Ct. 354

42 L.Ed. 775

BELEY et al.

v NAPHTALY.

No. 180.

February 28, 1898.

The defendant in error, who was the plaintiff below, brought this action in the circuit court of the United States for the Northern district of California to recover the possession of certain lands described in his complaint, and also the value of the rents, issues, and profits thereof. He alleged that he was the owner in fee of the lands in question, and entitled to their possession, and that while such owner the defendants wrongfully entered upon the lands and ousted him therefrom, and have since wrongfully withheld from him the possession thereof. He further alleged that he was the owner of the land by virtue of a patent duly and regularly issued to him by the United States in the year 1893, under and in pursuance of the provisions of the act of congress of April 24, 1820, entitled 'An act making further provision for the sale of the public lands,' and the acts supplemental thereto, and also under the provisions of section 7 of the act of congress of July 23, 1866, entitled 'An act to quiet land titles in California,' and that the defendants denied the validity of that patent.

The defendants answered, denying the various allegations of the complaint, and the case came to trial without a jury, a jury having been waived by all the parties.

The plaintiff put in evidence the patent issued to him from the United States for the land described in the complaint, and proved that while he was in the peaceable and quiet possession of such land the defendants entered upon it and ousted him therefrom, and have ever since detained the land from him. He also proved its rental value.

The bill of exceptions contains the following:

'It was then admitted by the defendants' counsel that at the time of the issuance of the patent hereinbefore described the lands therein and in the complaint described were public lands of the United States, subject to sale under the laws of the United States. It was here conceded by defendants' counsel that defendants did not propose to connect themselves in any manner or form with the title of the United States to the premises described in the complaint herein, or any part thereof, either by certificate of purchase, patent, or anything of the kind.

'The plaintiff then rested.'

The plaintiff's action rests primarily upon section 7 of the statute of the United States, entitled 'An act to quiet land titles in California,' approved July 23, 1866 (14 Stat. 218, 220). That section, so far as material, reads as follows:

'Sec. 7. And be it further enacted, that where persons in good faith, and for a valuable consideration, have purchased lands of Mexican grantees or assigns, which grants have subsequently been rejected, or where the lands so purchased have been excluded from the final survey of any Mexican grant, and have used, improved and continued in the actual possession of the same according to the lines of their original purchase, and where no adverse right or title (except of the United States) exists, such purchasers may purchase the same, after having such lands surveyed under existing laws, at the minimum price established by law, upon first making proof of the facts as required in this section, under regulations to be provided by the commissioner of the general land office, joint entries being admissible by coterminous proprietors to such an extent as will enable them to adjust their respective boundaries.'

To maintain their defense, the defendants then offered in evidence the application made by the plaintiff to purchase the lands from the United States pursuant to the seventh section above quoted. The application and the accompanying papers were offered for the purpose of showing that there had, in fact, never been any grant from the Mexican government to the Romeros, through whom, as supposed Mexican grantees, the plaintiff below derived his claim, and by reason of which claim he had made application to the land office under the provisions of the seventh section of the above-mentioned act of congress. The papers offered in evidence by defendants showed that while the country was under Mexican rule the Romeros had taken proceedings to obtain a grant of lands, which included the land in question, from the Mexican government, and that such proceedings had certainly gone as far as a final decree by the governor providing for the making of a grant asked for, but there was no record evidence of any actual grant ever having been made. The facts as to the documentary evidence in the case are fully set forth in the report of the case of Romero v. U. S., 1 Wall. 721.

The evidence so offered by defendants was objected to on the part of the plaintiff as immaterial, incompetent, and irrelevant, for the purpose of affecting the validity of the patent under which the plaintiff claimed title to the lands in question. The court sustained the objection, and the defendants duly excepted. Thereupon the defendants rested, and the court ordered judgment to be entered in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendants for a recovery of the land, in accordance with the prayer of the complaint. This judgment was affirmed by the United States circuit court of appeals for the Ninth circuit (44 U. S. App. 232, 19 C. C. A. 392, and 73 Fed. 120), and the case is brought here for review.

Henry F. Crane, for plaintiffs in error.

A. T. Britton and A. B. Browne, for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice PECKHAM, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.

1. The defendant in error insists that his patent is conclusive evidence that he is a purchaser within the meaning of the seventh section of the statute above quoted, and that, no fraud being alleged, no evidence can be received for the purpose of in any other way invalidating the patent issued to him by the government of the United States.

The patent does not preclude this court from construing the act of 1866, nor does it preclude an inquiry by the court whether the patent was issued without authority or against the expressed will of congress, as manifested in the statute. Burfenning v. Railway Co., 163 U. S. 321, 16 Sup. Ct. 1018, and cases there cited. If it were so issued, it is the duty of the court to give no weight to it. The proper construction of the act of 1866 is therefore the first question to be considered.

In order that a person may avail himself of that act, is it necessary that an actual grant from the Mexican authorities to some grantee through whom the title is derived should be proved? If so, the judgment in favor of the plaintiff in this case must be reversed, as no such grant was proved. We are of opinion, however, that the statute does not require proof of such a grant.

When the United States took possession of that portion of the country in which the lands in question are situated, it is public knowledge that there were many claims made by private individuals to lands under alleged grants from the preceding Mexican government. In order to ascertain and settle the questions arising thereunder, congress, on the 3d of March, 1851, passed an act (9 Stat. 631) in which a commission was constituted and before which claims of that character might be proved. The eighth section provided 'that each and every person claiming lands in Ca ifornia by virtue of any right or title derived from the Spanish or Mexican government, shall present the same to the said commissioners when sitting as a board, together with such documentary evidence and testimony of witnesses as the said claimant relies upon in support of said claims; and it shall be the duty of the commissioners, when the case is ready for hearing, to proceed promptly to examine the same upon such evidence and upon the evidence produced in behalf of the United States, and to decide upon the validity of said claim, and, within thirty days after such decision is rendered, to certify the same, with the reasons on which it is founded, to the district attorney of the United States in and for the district in which such decision shall be rendered.'

It will be noticed that the jurisdiction here given was only to decide upon the validity of the claim presented, and if the commission decided that the claims were not valid ones, as derived from the Mexican or Spanish government, it was the duty of the commission to reject them. Provision was made for a review of the decision of the commissioners by the district court of the district in which the lands claimed were situated, which court, upon such review, was authorized and required 'to decide on the validity of such claim,' and an appeal from the decision of the district court was allowed to be taken to the supreme court of the United States.

It appeared, from the documents offered in evidence in this action, that the Romeros had presented their claim to this commission, which had rejected it as not being a valid claim, and this rejection had been affirmed by the district court and by the supreme court in the case in 1 Wall. 721, mentioned above. There must undoubtedly have been, at the time of the enactment of the act of 1866, many cases existing in that part of the country where claims of bona fide purchasers for value, founded upon supposed rights or grants de rived from the Mexican or Spanish government, had been held to be invalid by the commission appointed under the act of 1851, and where, notwithstanding such decision, the claimants had remained in possession of the lands as originally acquired by them, there being no valid adverse right or title to the lands of which they were in possession, excepting that of the United States. This would have been the natural result arising from the difficulty in making formal and sufficient proof before the commission of valid rights and titles derived from the Mexican or Spanish government. It was only valid claims that the commission had power to allow. Where claims...