Guarantee Trust & Safe-Deposit Co. v. Delta & Pine-Land Co.

• Decision Date: 30 May 1900
• Docket Number: 913.
• Citation: 104 F. 5
• Parties: GUARANTEE TRUST & SAFE-DEPOSIT CO. v. DELTA & PINE-LAND CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

104 F. 5

GUARANTEE TRUST & SAFE-DEPOSIT CO. v. DELTA & PINE-LAND CO. et al.

No. 913.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 30, 1900

T. D Young, for appellant.

Edward Mayes, Frank Johnston, and T. A. McWillie, for appellees.

The court adopts, with some changes and modifications, the statement of the case prepared by counsel for the Delta &amp Pine-Land Company.

The Guarantee Trust & Safe-Deposit Company filed the bill in equity in this case on March 4, 1898, in the United States circuit court for the Western division of the Southern district of Mississippi, against the Delta & Pine-Land Company, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company, the Delta Development Company, and others. This proceeding involves the question of the titles to the lands in controversy, consisting of many large tracts of wild and unoccupied timber lands situated in several counties of the state of Mississippi. The appellant claims that its title to all the lands in controversy is paramount, and insists that the claims of title made by the appellees, respectively, are simply clouds upon its title, and should be canceled and annulled. The appellees claim different tracts of lands in severalty, but their titles are all derived through a common source. To this bill the appellees, the Delta & Pine-Land Company, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company, and the Delta Development Company, filed general demurrers. The original bill was then amended, and the demurrers were applied to the bill as amended. The circuit court sustained the demurrers, and, the complainant declining to further to further amend its bill, the original and the amended bills were dismissed, from which decree the present appeal was taken.

The Appellant's Claim of Title.

It appears from the statements of the bill that these lands were donated to the state of Mississippi by the act of congress of September 28, 1850.

Between the years 1854 and 1860 they were sold and conveyed by the state to J. C. Griffing, Jacob Thompson, and others. On November 23, 1859, the Memphis, Holly Springs & Mobile Railroad Company was incorporated by the state of Mississippi. The company was only authorized to own land necessary for the use of the road, except that it might hold lands conveyed to it by way of security for or in satisfaction of debts, or by donation, for a period not exceeding five years after the completion of the road. By the nineteenth section of its charter, the property of the company was exempted from taxation until the completion of its road, provided the work of construction was commenced within two years, and completed within ten years, from the date of the passage of the act. By section twenty-one of said act, the work of construction was to be commenced within three, and completed within twelve, years from the passage of the act. Similar statutes incorporating said company were passed by the states of Tennessee and Alabama. On February 20, 1867, the act of September 28, 1859, was revived by the legislature of the state of Mississippi, and the name of the company changed to the Memphis, Holly Springs, Okolona &amp Selma Railroad Company. This act authorized the company to acquire and own lands within five miles of its road, provided they were acquired by subscriptions for stock. On December 31, 1868, the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad Company was incorporated by the state of Alabama, and within three years began the construction of its road. On July 21, 1871, the Mississippi legislature passed an act changing the name of the Memphis, Holly Springs, Okolona & Selma Railroad Company to the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad Company, and authorized the company to receive lands located anywhere in the state in subscription to its stock. The Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi companies were afterwards consolidated under the name of the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad Company. In the year 1871 the lands in controversy were sold and conveyed by Griffing, Thompson, and others to the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad Company in subscription to stock. Prior to the transfer of the lands to the railroad company by Griffing, Thompson, and associates, they had been sold for the nonpayment of state and county taxes, and bought by the state in the years 1860, 1861, 1862, 1864, 1866, and 1868. On March 16, 1872, the Mississippi legislature passed an act providing that the auditor of the state should convey, for two cents per acre, all the lands which had been acquired by the said railroad company from Griffing, Thompson, and others, and which were then held by the state under sales for taxes, upon the condition that 25 miles of the road was completed. And it provided, further, that, where the lands were held or claimed by any of the levee boards, the levee boards should arrange for the payment in levee bonds of any levee taxes that were due on the lands. On March 18, 1873, the auditor of the state conveyed these lands to the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad Company, finding that said railroad company had acquired said lands from the original owners, and had constructed 25 miles of its road. On March 18, 1871, the three railroad companies having consolidated as stated, the consolidated company, to wit, the Selma. Marion & Memphis Railroad Company, executed a mortgage on its railroad franchises and equipment and also on these detached lands, to secure a bonded debt of $4,400,000. On December 18, 1874, Luke P. Blackburn, one of the holders of the mortgage bonds, for himself and the other mortgage creditors, filed a bill to foreclose this mortgage in the United States circuit court for the Western district of Tennessee. On June 3, 1879, a decree was made in said proceeding, under which, on June 1, 1880, the railroad proper and its equipment, with all the franchises of the railroad company, was sold, and purchased by J. J. Bushby and other persons associated with him, who soon afterwards organized themselves, under the Mississippi statute of March 16, 1877, as the Memphis, Selma & Brunswick Railroad Company. A decree was afterwards made on July 24, 1883, by the United States circuit court at Memphis, in the foreclosure proceeding, for the sale of these lands, and at said sale, made in front of the federal building in the city of Memphis, by the proper officers of the court, the Memphis, Selma & Brunswick Railroad Company became the purchaser, to which a deed therefor was properly executed and delivered, and the sale and the deed executed thereunder were duly ratified and confirmed by the court. On February 10, 1884, Jacob Thompson and others filed a bill in equity in the United States court at Oxford, Miss., against the Memphis, Selma & Brunswick Railroad Company, and under this proceeding these lands were sold and purchased by Martin Kelly, O. H. P. Piper, W. P. Dunivant, and others. These purchasers then conveyed the lands to the Memphis, Birmingham & Atlantic Railroad Company. The Memphis, Selma & Brunswick Railroad Company afterwards conveyed the lands to the appellant, in discharge of an indebtedness amounting to more than $600,000, and also procured a quitclaim deed to be made to the appellant by the Memphis, Birmingham & Atlantic Railroad Company. It is thus seen that the appellant claims title to the lands in controversy through the Selma, Marion & Memphis Railroad Company, and through the Memphis, Selma & Brunswick Railroad Company, the purchaser at the sale made under the decree of the United States circuit court for the Western district of Tennessee.

The Titles of the Appellees.

The averments of the bill in respect to the claim of title of the appellees are not clear and specific, but the following facts relating to their titles may be gathered from the statements of the amended bill: In paragraph 8 of the amended bill it is stated that the larger part of these lands had been sold at tax sales and purchased by the state in the years 1860, 1861 1862, 1864, 1866, and 1868. And it is also stated in this paragraph that a small portion of the lands had been sold at levee tax sales to the levee boards. This is explained more fully in the fourteenth paragraph of the amended bill, which states, in effect, that the defendants claim as their source of title that all the lands were sold at liquidating levee tax sales, made at different times from the year 1858 to the year 1873, and were struck off to the board of levee commissioners. These titles were subsequently acquired by purchase from the liquidating levee commissioners, severally, by E. C. Gordon and the Memphis & Vicksburg Railroad Company, at a sale made under a decree rendered by the chancery court of Hinds county in the suit of Green against Gibbs et al. The lands purchased by E. C. Gordon were afterwards bought by the Delta & Pine-Land Company, and those purchased by the Memphis & Vicksburg Railroad Company were subsequently acquired by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company. The other defendants in the case purchased the lands claimed by them, respectively, from the Delta & Pine-Land Company and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company. The lands were sold by Gibbs and Hemmingway, liquidating levee commissioners, under the decree of the chancery court of Hinds county, Miss., in the above-mentioned equity suit brought by Joshua Green and others against said commissioners. The purpose of the proceeding, which was begun prior to the year 1884, was to enforce the payment of the liquidating levee bonds issued under the act of February 13, 1867, by a sale of these lands then held in trust by the liquidating levee commissioners for the security of the bonds under the terms of said act. The lands were sold in 1875 for the general state and county taxes of the year 1874, under the act of March 1, 1875, commonly...