Fullinwider v. Southern Pac Co of California
| Decision Date | 13 January 1919 |
| Docket Number | No. 121,121 |
| Citation | 63 L.Ed. 331,248 U.S. 409,39 S.Ct. 130 |
| Parties | FULLINWIDER v. SOUTHERN PAC. R. CO. OF CALIFORNIA et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Fred Beall, of Washington, D. C., for appellant.
Messrs. Charles R. Lewers and William F. Herrin, both of San Francisco, Cal., for appellee.
Appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals affirming a decree of the District Court in and for the Southern District of California dismissing bill upon demurrer brought by appellant (we shall refer to him as complainant) against the railroad company to compel the company to convey to him a certain one-half section of land within the limits of the congressional grant to the company made by the Act of March 3, 1871, c. 122, 16 Stat. 573.
The bill alleged the incorporation of the company and that of various corporations impleaded with it, and the following facts: March 3, 1871, Congress made a grant to the Texas Pacific Railroad Company of certain sections of the public lands and provided that the lands which should not be sold or otherwise disposed of within three years after the completion of the entire road should be subject to settlement and pre-emption like other lands at a price to be fixed by and paid to the company at not exceeding an average of $2.50 per acre for all of the lands granted.
Section 23 of the act made a further grant of certain sections of the public lands in the State of California to the Southern Pacific Railroad and contained the provision that the company should construct a line of railroad from and to certain named points, 'with the same rights, grants, and privileges and subject to the same limitations, restrictions, and conditions as were granted to said Southern Pacific Railroad Company of California by the Act of July 27, 1866.'
The road was completed between the designated points more than ten years prior to the 1st of December, 1913.
Among the lands which have not been sold or disposed of that are within the limits of the grant are those described in the bill, and on October 29, 1913, complainant (appellant) tendered the company $800 and demanded of it and the other defendants (appellees) a conveyance of the land, which demand was refused, to the injury and damage of complainant. The land is of the value of $3,000 and complainant has the qualifications entitling him to purchase the land.
Complainant offers to pay the $800 in court and alleges that the suit was brought, among other things, for the purpose of having the court interpret and construe the acts of Congress referred to. The other defendants are alleged to have an interest in the land and a construction of the acts of Congress is prayed and of all other acts that have any relation to them; that defendants be decreed to convey to complainant the land and that he have general relief.
Sections 9 and 23 of the Act of March 3, 1871, are directly involved; the other sections of the act and other acts only as illustrating sections 9 and 23.
By section 9 a land grant is made to the Texas Pacific Railroad of public land in California in the terms and qualifications which are quite familiar and contains the provision set out in the bill which subjects the land unsold within three years after the completion of the road to settlement and preemption at a price not exceeding an average of $2.50 an acre.
By section 23 the Southern Pacific Railroad Company of California was authorized to construct a line of railroad from a point at or near Tehachapi Pass, by way of Los Angeles, to the Texas Pacific Railroad at or near the Colorado River, 'with the same rights, grants, and privileges, and subject to the same limitations,...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Reeves v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
...or policy of capital gains provisions of the Code.” (See 380 U.S. at 571-572; emphasis supplied.) See also Fullinwider v. Southern Pac. R. R. Co., 248 U.S. 409, 412 (1919) (policy may be used to resolve uncertainty in law). Respondent's concession that no policy is served by a pervasively r......
-
Thweatt v. Jackson
...statute such as § 1821(d)(14). Freytag, 501 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 2635, 115 L.Ed.2d at 776; Fullinwider v. Southern Pac. R.R., 248 U.S. 409, 412, 39 S.Ct. 130, 131, 63 L.Ed. 331 (1918) (public policy may be utilized to resolve ambiguities in a statute, "but it cannot be a substitute fo......
-
Jaffe Plumbing & Heating Co. v. Brooklyn Union Gas Co.
...body intends its enactments to accord with settled principles of public policy and not to violate them (Fullinwider v. Southern Pac. R.R. Co., 248 U.S. 409, 39 S.Ct. 130, 63 L.Ed. 331). When a statute may be interpreted in two ways, one of which works manifest inequitable results and the ot......
-
Ostrow v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
...8 L.Ed.2d 65 (1962); Bowles v. Glick Bros. Lumber Co., 146 F.2d 566, 571 (9th Cir.1945); see also Fullinwider v. S. Pac. R.R. Co., 248 U.S. 409, 412, 39 S.Ct. 130, 63 L.Ed. 331 (1919) (policy may be used to resolve uncertainty in law). Thus, even if section 56(b)(1)(A)(ii) were ambiguous, w......