Hodgson v. Midwest Oil Co.

• Decision Date: 20 March 1924
• Docket Number: 1351.
• Citation: 297 F. 273
• Parties: HODGSON v. MIDWEST OIL CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Wyoming

297 F. 273

HODGSON v. MIDWEST OIL CO. et al.

No. 1351.

United States District Court, D. Wyoming.

March 20, 1924

J. M Hodgson, of Cheyenne, Wyo., for plaintiff.

Dines Dines & Holme, Harold D. Roberts, Paul P. Prosser and Charles E. Works, all of Denver, Colo. (C. W. Burdick, of Cheyenne Wyo., of counsel), for defendants.

KENNEDY District Judge.

This is an action in ejectment, and therefore addresses itself to the law side of the court. The statement of facts, as they may be gathered from the petition, purports to show that the plaintiff by purchase became the owner of an undivided one-eighth interest in a certain placer mining act claim known as 'The Reif,' which claim it is alleged was discovered, located, and marked in accordance with the statutes in such case made and provided, in the year 1887 the lands being in what is now known as the Salt Creek oil field. It further appears that in 1910 other locators entered upon the lands in controversy and established a location known as 'The Tank,' and that in August, 1920, the Midwest Oil Company and the Wyoming Associated Oil Corporation, the defendants herein, applied for a lease upon the premises under the Act of February 25, 1920 (41 Stat. 437 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, Secs. 4640 1/4-4640 1/4ss)), using as a basis of their right to a lease of the premises the ownership by conveyance from the original owners of the Tank claim; that subsequently two separate leases were granted by the Interior Department on the north portion of the land in controversy to the defendant Midwest Oil Company, and on the south portion to the defendant Wyoming Associated Oil Corporation. It is asserted that the plaintiff, by virtue of his part ownership in the Reif claim, has a superior right to that of the defendants in and to the lands in controversy, and seeks to have the defendants ejected from the premises and the same restored to the plaintiff and his colocators or their successors in interest in the Reif claim.

The petition is attacked by demurrer, both of a special and general character. One ground of the demurrer is that two causes of action are improperly joined. This is a special ground for demurrer under the Wyoming statute. Comp. Stats. Wyo. 1920, Sec. 5651, subd. 6. The Wyoming statute also provides as to what causes of action may be united in the same petition. Comp. Stats. Wyo. 1920, Sec. 5606, subd. 6, which reads:

'Claims to recover real property, with or without damages, for the withholding thereof, the rents and profits of the same and the partition thereof.'

It seems that the application of the foregoing provision is limited, however, in that by section 5607, immediately following, it is provided:

'The causes of action so united must not require different places of trial, and, except as otherwise provided, must affect all the parties to the action.'

The question is: Does the case at bar come within the provision of the last-quoted statute? Here we have a case in which the two defendants are holding, by virtue of leases granted by the United States, entirely separate and distinct parcels of land, to which plaintiff claims the right of possession, and from which he seeks to eject the defendants. It is not asserted in the petition that the defendant Midwest Company is claiming or withholding possession of the south parcel, or that the defendant Wyoming Associated Oil Corporation is asserting or withholding possession of the north parcel of the land in controversy, but it does appear that each of the defendants is claiming and withholding a separate parcel of the land by virtue of a lease independent of the other, although granted at the same time by the Interior Department. Manifestly, therefore, in an action in ejectment, plaintiff's cause of action against a party defendant, asserting claim to and withholding possession of one parcel of land under a separate grant, cannot affect the other party defendant, asserting claim to and withholding possession of a separate and distinct parcel, under a different grant. In other words, there is no claim of joint possession of the land in controversy by the defendants, so as to affect all the parties to the action, which this court conceives to be the limitation in section 5607, supra. Greer v. Mezes, 24 How. 268, 277, 16 L.Ed. 661; Gibbons v. Martin, 10 Fed.Cas. 292. A different rule might prevail under certain circumstances in an equity suit, under the federal practice.

The general ground of demurrer, that the petition fails to state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action under section 5651, supra, raises a number of points which have been fully and ably discussed by counsel for the litigants which, however, will only be noticed in part. The defendants contend that plaintiff's case presents a collateral attack upon...