Jantzen v. Arizona Copper Co.

• Decision Date: 19 January 1889
• Docket Number: Civil 234
• Citation: 3 Ariz. 6,20 P. 93
• Parties: LOUIS JANTZON et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. THE ARIZONA COPPER COMPANY, Defendant and Appellee
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

20 P. 93

3 Ariz. 6

LOUIS JANTZON et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. THE ARIZONA COPPER COMPANY, Defendant and Appellee

Civil No. 234

Supreme Court of Arizona

January 19, 1889

APPEAL from a judgment of the District Court of the First Judicial District in and for the County of Graham. William H. Barnes Judge.

Affirmed.

Jeffords & Franklin, for Appellants.

M. J Egan, and Alexander Campbell, for Appellee.

Porter J.

OPINION

The facts are stated in the opinion.

PORTER J.

This was an action in ejectment. Cause was tried by the court, and judgment rendered for the plaintiff. The title of plaintiff was asserted title to a mining claim called the "West Extension of the Thompson," derived by a chain of title to the location of Freudenthal, in January, 1882. It assigned for error that plaintiff failed to show that that location was valid under the mining laws, by proof that Freudenthal is a citizen of the United States; that the notice of location was posted on the claim; that he erected monuments marking the same on the ground.

The location notice was offered in evidence, and the same recites all the facts essential to a valid location; is signed by Samuel J. Freudenthal; and it was recorded on the second day of January, 1882, the day after the date of the location. The locator, and those claiming under him, have done annually one hundred dollars worth of labor on the mine ever since. A year after this location the witness Ferrie swears that he found monuments on the ground corresponding to those in the notice, and as agent for plaintiff he has done the work on the same since. There is proof that Freudenthal has been for many years a resident of the United States. In the absence of proof to the contrary, we think this evidence made out a title. To require titles to mining claims to be sustained by proof positive of all the requirements of the law would unsettle all confidence in these titles. Purchasers should rest secure in the titles they find of record; at least, until attacked. It will be presumed that a man being a resident of the United States, and who has made a mining location, was a citizen of the United States; that he posted the notice of his claim, and properly marked the ground, in case where it appears that he recorded, at or near the time, a location notice reciting these facts. Such evidence will make out a prima facie title. It was held in Strepy v. Stark, (Colo.) 5 P. 111, that the location notice, when recorded, is prima facie evidence of all that the statute requires it to contain, and which are therein sufficiently set forth. The rule in ejectment, that the plaintiff must recover on the strength of his own title, and not on the weakness of defendant's, does...