Improvement Company v. Munson

• Citation: 81 U.S. 442,14 Wall. 442,20 L.Ed. 867
• Parties: IMPROVEMENT COMPANY v. MUNSON
• Decision Date: 01 December 1871
• Court: United States Supreme Court

81 U.S. 442

20 L.Ed. 867

14 Wall. 442

IMPROVEMENT COMPANY v. MUNSON.

December Term, 1871

IN error to the Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania; in which court, Munson and others brought ejectment agaisnt The Schuylkill and Dauphin Improvement Company and two other like companies, all corporations of Pennsylvania, to recover certain valuable lands in the State just named. Judgment having gone for the plaintiffs, the companies brought the case here.

Mr. N. H. Sharpless, for the plaintiff in error; Messrs. G. W. Woodward, F. B. Gowen, and J. E. Gowen, contra.

Mr. Justice CLIFFORD stated the case, and delivered the opinion of the court.

Rules of decision in the courts of the United States, as well as the forms and modes of process, are very largely derived from the laws of the States as construed by the decisions of the State courts, in cases where they apply, except where the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States otherwise require or provide.

Controversy having arisen between the parties in respect to the title to the tract of land described in the record, the plaintiffs, on the sixth of February, 1866, brought an action of ejectment against the three corporation defendants and the other defendants therein named, to recover the possession of the tract, alleging that the title to the tract and the right of possession were in them and not in the defendants. Service was duly made and the defendants appeared and pleaded that they were not guilty as alleged in the declaration. Issue was joined upon that plea and the parties went to trial, and the verdict and judgment were for the plaintiffs. Exceptions were duly taken by the defendants, and they sued out a writ of error and removed the cause into this court.

Title to the premises in controversy is deraigned by the plaintiffs from one Benjamin Bonawitz, whose claim to the same is supposed to be established by the following documentary evidences of title, as more fully set forth in the bill of exceptions: (1.) An application to the land office of the State, dated December 14th, 1829, made by him for sixty-six acres of unimproved land in Lower Mahantongo Township, Schuylkill County, bounded as therein described. (2.) Warrant from the State, of the same date, to the applicant for the land described in the application, as fully set forth in the record. (3.) Return of survey made by a deputy surveyor of the county, June 1st, 1829, in pursuance of the warrant, as duly returned to the land office, and accepted the fifth of March of the succeeding year, as follows, to wit: Situate in Lower Mahantongo Township, Schuylkill County, containing sixty-six acres and one hundred and three perches, and allowance of six per cent., returned this third day of March, 1830, in pursuance of a warrant dated the 14th of December, 1829, to Benjamin Bonawitz. Superadded to the return is the following statement, that the lines and corners of the survey were made on the eighteenth of June, 1829, in pursuance of a warrant dated the seventeenth of March of that year, granted to the same person, a return on which was made, but was rejected on account of the survey not answering the description of the warrant. (4.) Sundry mesne conveyances from the warrantee and subsequent grantees of the land described in the warrant, to the plaintiffs.

Appended to the statement that those conveyances were introduced is the admission of the counsel for the defendants that Schuylkill County was erected out of Berks County, and that Porter Township, where the premises are situated, as alleged in the declaration, was created out of Lower Mahantongo Township, which is the name of the township where the location was made under the warrant, survey, and return.

Documentary evidences of title were then introduced by the defendants to maintain the issue on their part, as follows: (1.) An application, dated July 1st, 1793, made by Jacob Yeager to the land office for four hundred acres of and adjoining land granted the same day to William Witman, Jr., in the county of Berks. (2.) Warrant from the State, dated July 1st, 1793, to Jacob Yeager for the same land, as more fully set forth in the bill of exceptions. (3.) Return of survey on the warrant by the deputy surveyor of Berks County, on the tenth of July, 1794, of four hundred and forty acres and sixty-four perches of land and allowance, situate in Pinegrove Township, in the county of Berks, returned and accepted August 26th, 1794, as therein certified. (4.) Sundry conveyances were also offered in evidence by the defendants, tending, as they contend, to deduce title to the said corporations, or one of them, to the land located and surveyed under the warrant to Jacob Yeager, which includes the land embraced in the warrant and survey under which the plaintiffs deraign their title.

Rebutting evidence was then introduced by the plaintiffs: (1.) Certified copies of eighteen applications, dated July 1st, 1793, to the land office, for four hundred acres each, the leading one being in the name of James Silliman, and one of the number being the application by Jacob Yeager given in evidence by the defendants, as follows: Jacob Yeager applies for four hundred acres of land adjoining land this day granted to William Witman, Jr., in the county of Berks. (2.) Certified copies of eighteen descriptive warrants, issued upon those applications, including the warrant given to Jacob Yeager, introduced in evidence by the other party. (3.) Also certified copies of eighteen surveys, including the Jacob Yeager tract, made by a deputy surveyor of Berks County, upon those warrants, corresponding with the descriptions set forth in the warrants, the certificate of the survery in question being fully set forth in the bill of exceptions. (4.) Return and acceptance of those eighteen surveys, made by Henry Vanderslice, July 16th, 1793, as appears in the list annexed to the return. They also introduced a certified copy of a caveat, entered July 18th, 1793, by John Kunckle and Aaron Bowen against granting the tracts either to the said Jacob Yeager or to any one of the other seventeen applicants under the warrants included in that list. (5.) Certificate from the office of the surveyor-general that no proceedings had ever been had upon the said caveat.

By that certificate it appears that diligent and careful search had been made in that department for proceedings on that caveat, and the proper officer certifies that he does not find that any citation was ever applied for, or that any proceedings or action was ever had by the board of property upon or concerning the same, which remains recorded in the office of the surveyor-general. (6.) They also offered in evidence a map, showing the two locations of the Jacob Yeager tract, the first by Henry Vanderslice, and the second by William Wheeler, both deputy surveyors of Berks County. (7.) Both sides admitted that Henry Vanderslice was a deputy surveyor of Berks County, and that the location of the Jacob Yeager tract as made by him was made in the county of Northumberland, within one mile of the line between that county and Berks County, and that the second location of the warrant by William Wheeler was made in Berks County, about twenty-two miles distant from the survey made by the other deputy surveyor.

Responsive to the rebutting evidence given by the plaintiffs the defendants then introduced certified copies of returns of surveys made by William Wheeler, July 10th, 1794, upon the Jacob Yeager warrant, and upon three others of the eighteen warrants returned and accepted, August 26th of that year, together with a connected chart of the four tracts, as prepared from the original surveys on file in the office of the surveyor-general.

Neither party desiring to offer any further evidence the presiding justice proceeded to charge the jury. Speaking of the warrant and survey introduced by the plaintiffs, he told the jury that the court saw no defect in the plaintiffs' title under that warrant and survey, adding that the only claim which the defendants have set up is under warrants located several miles from the land in controversy by surveys returned and accepted, and to that instruction no exception was taken by the defendants. But the court also told the jury that 'no subsequent official survey of the land under those warrants, without a warrant of survey or order of the board of property, was authorized.' Therefore, said the justice, if the jury take the same view of the evidence as the court, the verdict should be for the plaintiffs, and the jury followed that instruction, and the defendants excepted.

Two errors are assigned, as follows: (1.) That the court erred in charging the jury that no subsequent official survey of the land under those warrants, without a warrant of survey or order of the board of property, was authorized. (2.) That the court erred in telling the jury that if they took the same view of the evidence as the court the verdict should be for the plaintiffs, as the effect of the instruction, as the defendants contend, was to withdraw from the jury the consideration of the question whether or not the board of property might not have issued an order for a second survey of the tract, the evidence of which had been lost.

Much discussion of the first error assigned is unnecessary, as the defendants admit that the law is well settled in that State that a warrant, where it appears that a survey has been ordered upon it and made, returned, and accepted, is functus officio, and that no title under a second survey can be made unless such second survey was ordered by the board of property, which it is admitted is not directly proved in this case. Such an admission by the defendants is a very proper one, as the decisions of the State court which furnish the rule of decision for this court in this case are very numerous and decisive to that effect. Perhaps the leading case upon the subject is that of Deal...