Frederick Weyerhaeuser v. Herbert Hoyt 27, 28 1910

• Decision Date: 19 December 1910
• Docket Number: No. 24,24
• Citation: 219 U.S. 380,31 S.Ct. 300,55 L.Ed. 258
• Parties: FREDERICK WEYERHAEUSER and John A. Humbird, Appts., v. HERBERT H. HOYT. Argued April 27, 28, 1910. Ordered for reargument
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

219 U.S. 380

31 S.Ct. 300

55 L.Ed. 258

FREDERICK WEYERHAEUSER and John A. Humbird, Appts.,

v HERBERT H. HOYT.

No. 24.

Argued April 27, 28, 1910.

Ordered for reargument December 19, 1910.

Reargued January 19, 20, 1911.

Decided February 20, 1911.

[Syllabus from pages 380-382 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Charles W. Bunn and F. B. Kellogg for appellants.

Messrs. M. H. Stanford and Herbert H. Hoyt for appellee.

Mr. Chief Justice White delivered the opinion of the court:

Conflicting claims to 40 acres of land in the state of Minnesota is the controversy which this case involves. Both parties assert title derived from the United States, the appellants in virtue of a patent issued under a land grant made to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and the appellee as the result of an alleged purchase under the timber and stone act. The facts are these:

The Northern Pacific Railroad Company in 1883 filed in the Land Department a list of indemnity selections which embraced the land in question. In 1893 a rearranged list was filed, differing from the previous one, in that it specified the particular tract of land lost in the place limits for which each described selection within the indemnity limits was made. The Land Department having ruled that the eastern terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company was not at Ashland, but at Duluth, a point west of Ashland, the selections, so far as they related to lands east of Duluth, among which was the land in controversy were canceled by order of the Secretary of the Interior. Following this, in December of that year, Richard B. Jones applied to purchase the land under the timber and stone act. A few months after, on February 28, 1898, the Secretary of the Interior made an order formally withdrawing from entry the selected land east of Duluth in order, as was declared, to preserve the right of the railroad company, if any, resulting from the selections previously filed, pending the decision by this court of cases involving whether the eastern terminus was at Duluth or at Ashland. About nine months after this withdrawal, in December, 1898, Jones made his final proof and paid the purchase money, $100. The receiver of the local land office, however, recited in the receipt issued to Jones that his rights were 'subject to any claim the Northern Pacific Railroad Company may have to the lands herein described.'

In 1900 (177 U. S. 421, 44 L. ed. 830, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 677; 177 U. S. 435, 44 L. ed. 836, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 706), it was decided that the eastern terminus of the Northern Pacific road was at Ashland, and therefore that the Land Department had erred in holding that such terminus was at Duluth. The Secretary of the Interior then formally reinstated the list of selections previously filed by the railroad company, the entry of Jones was canceled, and the selections were approved and patents issued to the Northern Pacific Railway Company as entitled to all rights under the selections. The railway company conveyed the tract in controversy to Weyerhaeuser and Humbird, the present appellants.

This suit was then begun by Hoyt in a court of the state of Minnesota, against Weyerhaeuser and Humbird, to compel a conveyance of the land, and to restrain the cutting or removal of timber during the pendency of the suit, on the ground that the title was held by the defendants in trust for complainant. The right to relief was principally based upon the contention that the purchase by Jones under the timber and stone act was paramount to the indemnity selection previously made by the railroad company, and hence that the Land Department had fallen into an error of law in patenting the land to the company. In addition there were numerous other grounds upon which the right to relief was predicated, but we do not deem it necessary now to detail them, as we shall come to state and dispose of them after we have passed upon the contention concerning the paramount nature of the timber and stone entry. The case, having been removed into a circuit court of the United States upon the ground that on the face of the bill it involved the construction of acts of Congress, was in that court tried and a decree was entered dismissing the bill. The circuit court of appeals, whose action is now under review, reversed the decree of the circuit court, and remanded the cause, with directions to enter a decree for the complainant, granting the relief prayed. 88 C. C. A. 404, 161 Fed. 324.

The decision of the court was based upon the conclusion that the application to purchase, made by Jones, although subsequent in date to the filing by the railroad company of its list of indemnity selections, was paramount to such selections, even although they had been subsequently approved by the Secretary of the Interior. This was not, however, the result of an interpretation originally considered of the granting act, but was exclusively caused, as shown by the opinion of the court, by what was held to be the authoritative and controlling operation of a decision of this court,—Sjoli v. Dreschel, 199 U. S. 564, 50 L. ed. 311, 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 154. The soundness of this view lies at the threshold of the case; since, if it be that the rights of the parties are authoritatively concluded by the ruling in the Sjoli Case, it will not be necessary to further consider the subject. Coming at once to analyze the ruling in the Sjoli Case in order to fix its true import, we think it is apparent that the court below was mistaken in holding that the decision was here authoritatively decisive. This is said because we see no escape from that conclusion when the issues in the Sjoli Case are accurately ascertained and are compared with those here presented.

The Sjoli controversy, succinctly stated, thus arose: A homestead settler went in 1884 upon land within the indemnity limits of the grant to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. He erected a dwelling house and moved into it with his family and cultivated a portion of the land, all prior to the filing in 1885 of a list of selections by the railroad company, embracing the tract settled upon by Sjoli. Although the settler had thus, prior to the filing of the list of selections, entered upon and improved the land with the intention of perfecting title under the homestead laws, his application to enter, for reasons which need not be here adverted to, was not made until subsequent to the filing by the railroad company of its list of selections. Relying upon this fact, the railroad company opposed the application of Sjoli, and the proceedings which took place in the Land Department simply required the Department to determine whether the railroad company, by the filing of its list of selections, could deprive the settler Sjoli of his rights, despite the fact that his settlement and improvement of the land had occurred prior to the filing by the company of its list of selections. The Land Department decided in favor of the settler, and a patent was issued to him.

The matter decided by this court in the Sjoli Case arose from the bringing of a suit by Dreschel, as assignee of the rights of the railroad company, asserting that Sjoli held the land in trust for him as the grantee of the railway company, because the Land Department had, as a matter of law, erred in deciding that the rights of the settler Sjoli were paramount to the subsequent selection by the railroad company, since, at the time of the filing of such list of selections, no record evidence existed in the Land Department of the asserted settlement by Sjoli, or of his intention to avail of the benefit of the homestead laws. The action of the Land Department in maintaining the paramount right of the settler was sustained. As it is manifest from the statement we have made that the controversy in this case involves no question whatever concerning the rights of a settler initiated prior to the filing by the railroad company of its list of selections, but simply calls upon us to determine whether the Land Department erred in deciding that a filed list of selections was, after approval, paramount to a subsequent application to purchase, it is at once demonstrated that the question here involved is wholly different from that which was decided in the Sjoli Case. This difference is as wide as that which would exist between a ruling that one who was prior in time was prior in right, and a directly antagonistic decision that one who was subsequent in time was yet prior in right. And the broad distinction which obtains between the matter which was involved and decided in the Sjoli Case and the question presented on this record is made, if need be, more apparent when it is considered that, in the Sjoli Case, the action of the Land Department in issuing the patent to the settler, because he was prior in time, was sustained, while to hold that decision applicable here would reverse the action of the Land Department in issuing a patent to the railway company because it was prior in time. While, in view of this difference between the issues involved in the Sjoli Case and those here arising, we are constrained to the conclusion that the former case cannot be held to be here authoritatively decisive, of course, the due persuasive force of the reasoning of the opinion in the Sjoli Case, if here applicable, remains, and must be considered when we come, as we now do, to pass upon the controversy here arising, enlightened by the true interpretation of the granting act, as elucidated by the applicable decisions of this court.

It is beyond dispute on the fact of the granting act of July 2, 1864 (13 Stat. at L. 365, 367, chap. 217), and of the joint resolution of May 31, 1870 (16 Stat. at L. 378), extending the indemnity limits, that it was the purpose of Congress in making the grant to confer a substantial right to land within the indemnity limits in lieu of lands lost within the place limits. It is also beyond dispute that, as the only method...