Green v. Watkins

• Decision Date: 12 February 1822
• Parties: GREEN v. WATKINS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

20 U.S. 27

5 L.Ed. 388

7 Wheat. 27

GREEN v. WATKINS.

February 12, 1822

Feb. 5th.

THIS cause was argued by Mr. Montgomery, for the plaintiff in error, and by Mr. B. Hardin, for the defendant.

Feb. 12th.

Mr. Justice STORY delivered the opinion of the Court.

The record in this case presents a great variety of facts, out of which several important questions have arisen; but as the merits of the cause may, in the opinion of the Court, be completely disposed of by the decision of a single point, the facts which illustrate that point will alone be mentioned.

This is a writ of right, originally brought by the plaintiff in error, against the defendant in error, to recover a certain tract of land in Kentucky, described in the writ. Issue being joined on the mere right between the parties, the demandent, to sustain his suit, gave in evidence a patent of the land in question, granted to him by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and dated the 28th day of January, 1784, and offered proof of the boundary. But he offered no proof, other than his patent, that he was ever seized of the land in question. According to the decision of this Court, in Green v. Liter, (8 Cranch, 229.) a patent of vacant lands of the State conveys to the grantee a constructive actual seisin, sufficient to maintain a writ of right; and therefore the demandant in this case entitled himself prima facie, upon this evidence, to a recovery. To rebut this conclusion, the tenants offered in evidence, as well for the purpose of proving title in themselves, as to show that the demandant was never seized of the premises, certain patents from the Commonwealth of Virginia, which included the premises, to wit, a patent to John Lewis and Richard May, dated the first of June, 1782; a patent to Edmund Eggleston, dated the same day and year; and a patent to John Gratton, dated the same day and year; and a patent to Isham Watkins of the same date: under which patents the tenants endeavoured to derive by mesne conveyances a good title to themselves in severalty. To the regularity of the title of the tenants so derived, the demandant took several objections, which were overruled by the Court, and the conveyances were admitted in evidence; and if, in point of law, the patents so offered in evidence by the tenants were admissible, for the purpose of showing that the demandant never had any constructive actual seisin in the premises, which was the only seisin on which he relied, the regularity of these mesne conveyances to the tenant becomes wholly immaterial, since, if these patents were still outstanding in strangers, they would, if admissible, all establish the same defect of seisin in the demandant. The question, then, which meets us at the threshhold of this cause is, whether it be competent for the tenants, in a writ of right, where the demandant shows no seisin by a pedis positio, but relies wholly on a constructive actual seisin, in virtue of a patent of the land, as vacant land, to disprove that constructive seisin, by showing that the State had previously granted the same land to other persons, with whom the tenants claim no privity. In other words, whether the tenants can set up title and seisin in a stranger, to disprove the seisin of the demandant: and, upon the fullest consideration, we are all of opinion that they may. The reasoning on which our opinion is founded, is this; the mise joined in a writ of right, necessarily involves the titles of both parties to the suit, and institutes a comparison between them. It is consequently the right of each party, to give any fact in evidence, which destroys the title of the other; for the question in controversy is, which hath the better mere right to hold the demanded premises. It has been already decided by this Court, and is indeed among the best established doctrines of the common law, that seisin in deed either by possession of the land, and perception of profits, or by construction of law, is indispensable to enable the demandant to maintain his suit. The tenant may therefore show in his defence, that the demandant had no such actual seisin; for the seisin of the freehold by the tenant, which is admitted by the bringing of the suit against him, is a sufficient title for the tenant, until the...