Campbell v. Rankin
| Citation | 99 U.S. 261,25 L.Ed. 435 |
| Parties | CAMPBELL v. RANKIN |
| Decision Date | 01 October 1878 |
| Court | United States Supreme Court |
ERROR to the Supreme Court of the Territory of Montana.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. J. Hubley Ashton and Mr. Nathaniel Wilson for the plaintiffs in error.
Mr. Richard T. Merrick, contra.
The declaration avers that plaintiffs below, who are also plaintiffs in error, were the owners of a mining claim in Meagher County, known as Claim No. 2 below discovery, in Green Horn Gulch, and that defendant wrongfully entered upon and took possession of a portion of said claim, and took and carried away large quantities of gold-bearing earth and gold-dust, the property of plaintiffs, of the value of $15,000.
The answer amounts to a general denial of all the averments of the complaint.
Bills of exception taken on the trial show that plaintiffs offered in evidence the record of a judgment in the same court, in which the defendant in this suit was plaintiff, and the present plaintiffs and those under whom they claim were defendants, which was an action for trespass, wherein the same question of conflicting interference of the two mining claims was in issue, and the verdict and judgment were for plaintiffs in this suit. The admission of this record was objected to, and the court sustained the objection.
Plaintiffs then offered to prove that they had been in actual possession of Claim No. 2 in Green Horn Gulch for several years, and that defendant had admitted in conversation the existence of such a claim, and had conceded a dividing line between his claim and that of plaintiffs, which would give to the latter the ground in controversy. The court refused this also.
Plaintiffs then offered in evidence a deed from Harding & Wilson for Claim No. 2, Green Horn Gulch, dated December, 1869, and proof of occupancy and use of it ever since. The court rejected this also. And having rejected all the evidence offered by plaintiffs, it directed the jury to find for defendant, and on that verdict rendered a judgment, which was affirmed on appeal by the Supreme Court of the Territory.
The record sufficiently shows that neither party to this suit had any legal title to the locus in quo from the United States, and that the controversy involves only such possessory right as the act of Congress recognizes in the locator and occupant of a mining privilege.
Since this right of possession was the matter to be decided by the jury, it is almost incomprehensible that proof of prior occupancy, and especially when accompanied by a deed showing color of right, should be rejected.
In actions of ejectment, or trespass quare clausum fregit, possession by the plaintiff at the time of eviction has always been held prima facie evidence of the legal title, and as against a mere trespasser it is sufficient. 2 Greenl. Evid., sect. 311. If this be the law, when the right of recovery depends on the strict legal title in the plaintiff, how much more appropriate is it as evidence of the superior right of possession under the acts of Congress which respect such possession among miners.
If this plain principle of the common law needed support from adjudged cases, as applicable to the one before us, it may be found in the courts of California in Atwood v. Fricot, 17 Cal. 37; English v. Johnson, id. 107; and Hess v. Winder, 30 id. 355.
The court below erred, therefore, in rejecting this evidence of plaintiffs' prior possession.
Whatever may have been the opinion of other courts, it has been the doctrine of this court in regard to suits on contract ever since the case of the Washington, Alexandria, & Georgetown Steam Packet Co. v. Sickles (24 How. 333), and in regard to actions affecting real estate, since Miles v. Caldwell (2 Wall. 35), that whenever the same question has been in issue and tried, and judgment rendered, it is conclusive of the issue so decided in any subsequent suit between the same parties; and also, that where, from the nature of the pleadings, it would be left in doubt on what precise issue the verdict or judgment was rendered, it is competent to ascertain this by parol evidence on the second trial. The latest expression of the doctrine is found in Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U. S. 351; Davis v. Brown, id. 423.
The rejection of the record of the suit of Rankin v. Campbell and Others was...
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