Harriet Barlow v. Northern Pacific Railway Company

• Decision Date: 03 April 1916
• Docket Number: No. 257,257
• Citation: Harriet Barlow v. Northern Pacific Railway Company, 240 U.S. 484, 36 S.Ct. 456, 60 L.Ed. 760 (1916)
• Parties: HARRIET A. BARLOW, Plff. in Err., v. NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

240 U.S. 484

36 S.Ct. 456

60 L.Ed. 760

HARRIET A. BARLOW, Plff. in Err.,

v NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY.

No. 257.

Argued March 3, 1916.

Decided April 3, 1916.

Messrs. S. E. Ellsworth and John Knauf for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. Charles Donnelly, Charles W. Bunn, and Emerson Hadley for defendant in error.

Mr. Chief Justice Whitedelivered the opinion of the court:

In Jamestown & N. R. Co. v. Jones, 177 U. S. 125, 44 L. ed. 698, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 568, there came under consideration the construction of the act of Congress of March 3, 1875, entitled, 'An Act Granting to Railroads the Right of Way through the Public Lands of the United States,' chap. 152, 18 Stat. at L. 482, Comp. Stat. 1913, § 4921.The case involved a controversy between the railroad which was entitled to the benefit of the act and Jones, a homestead entryman holding a patent of the United States in consequence of rights initiated after the railroad had constructed its line, but before it had filed a map of its right of way in the appropriate local land office.The railroad claimed that its right of way across the land covered by Jones's patent was paramount, and Jones asserted that his right under the patent was dominant.Giving sanction to a previous course of administrative construction dealing with unsurveyed public land, it was held that an appropriation of the right of way by a construction of the road under the statute gave the railroad the paramount right, and that the provision of the statute concerning the filing of a map and profile in the local land office was intended not to deprive of the power to fix and secure the right of way by construction in advance of filing such map and profile, but simply to afford the means of securing the right of way in advance of construction.The two methods of securing the right, the one by construction of the road, and the other in anticipation of construction by filing a map, were decided to in no wise conflict the one with the other, as both afforded a means of securing the right which statute gave.The opinion pointed out that although the previous administrative rulings were concerned only with unsurveyed lands, they were equally applicable under the statute to surveyed lands, and it was thus concluded: 'It follows from these views that the grant to plaintiff in error (the railroad company) by the act of 1875 became definitely fixed by the actual construction of its road, and that the entry of the defendant in error (Jones) was subject thereto.'

In Minneapolis, St. P. & S. Ste. M. R. Co. v. Doughty, 208 U. S. 251, 52 L. ed. 474, 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 291, the controversy was between the railway company and a settler holding a patent of the United States whose right had been initiated before the construction of the railroad, but after a preliminary survey which had been made by the railroad as a means of ultimately determining upon what line it would build its road, the stakes of such survey being, at the time the settler initiated his right, across the land in question.The claim of the settler was that a mere entry of the railroad for the purpose stated was not a construction within the meaning of the Jones Case, while that of the railroad was 'that an entry upon the land to locate the road is as necessary as an entry on the land to build the road, and, being there, the railroad 'could not become a trespasser, either as to the government or as to the plaintiff."It was decided that as a mere preliminary step for the purpose of determining where the road should be located was not, in and of itself, the equivalent of a definite location of the line and a permanent appropriation of the right of way, the case was not covered by the rule of the Jones Case and the right of the settler was paramount.

Which of these rulings is here controlling is the single question arising for decision on this record, as will be at once seen by the following statement of the case:

The suit was commenced by the railroad to quiet its title to its right of...