Joanna Little v. Williams

• Decision Date: 01 December 1913
• Docket Number: No. 8,8
• Citation: 231 U.S. 335,58 L.Ed. 256,34 S.Ct. 68
• Parties: JOANNA LITTLE, Plff. in Err., v. J. J. WILLIAMS et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

231 U.S. 335

34 S.Ct. 68

58 L.Ed. 256

JOANNA LITTLE, Plff. in Err.,

v J. J. WILLIAMS et al.

No. 8.

Submitted October 30, 1913.

Decided December 1, 1913.

Mr. Henry Craft for plaintiff in error.

No appearance for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the opinion of the court:

This was a suit to quiet the title to about 1,200 acres of land in Mississippi county, in the state of Arkansas, lying within the meander line of what was represented on the plats of the United States survey as Walker's lake. The plaintiff claimed title through (a) the act of Congress of September 28, 1850 (9 Stat. at L. 519, chap. 84), granting swamp and overflowed lands to the state; (b) an act of the state legislature in 1893 (Laws Ark. 1893, p. 172), granting to the St. Francis Levee District 'all the lands of this state' lying within that district; and (c) a deed of March 11, 1903, from the levee district to the plaintiff. The defendants, in addition to denying the plaintiff's title, asserted title in themselves, in virtue of their ownership, under swamp-land patents from the United States to the state, and from the state to their grantors, of fractional sections abutting on the meander line of the lake. After a trial, the chancery court of the county entered a decree dismissing the complaint on the merits, and the decree was affirmed by the supreme court of the state. 88 Ark. 37, 113 S. W. 340.

The material facts, due regard being had for the findings of the supreme court, are these: The lands in the vicinity of Walker's lake were surveyed, in 1847, into two fractional townships, made so by meandering, and excluding what the surveyor designated as the lake; but the meander line, instead of approximately following the margin of the actual lake, a small, nonnavigable body of water, was run about a mile distant therefrom, along a slash or slough which the surveyor probably mistook for the outer portion of the lake. The land in controversy, although then wet and swampy, as were also the lands outside the meander line, was not part of the bed of the lake, but lay between its bank, which was well defined, and the meander line. After the enactment of the swampland act, the surveyed lands in the two townships were listed by the Secretary of the Interior as swamp lands, and were patented to the state under that act, and the fractional sections abutting on the meander line and opposite the land in controversy were then patented by the state to the defendants' grantors. The unsurveyed land within the meander line was never selected by the state, or listed by the Secretary of the Interior, as swamp or overflowed land; nor was it ever patented to the state.

As part of a compromise and settlement between the state and the United States, negotiated in 1895, and approved by the state legislature in 1897, and by Congress in 1898, the state, subject to certain exceptions not here material, accepted the lands theretofore patented, approved, or confirmed to it under the swamp-land act as the full measure of lands due to it thereunder, and relinquished to the United State all other claims or demands, adjusted or unadjusted, growing out of that act. Senate Report No. 76, 54th Cong. 1st Sess.; Laws Ark. 1897, p. 88; 30 Stat. at L. 367, chap. 229.

In disposing of the case, the supreme court of the state, after observing that the plaintiff must recover, if at all, upon the strength of her own title, and not upon the weakness of that of her adversaries, held (a) that, as the land in controversy had not been selected, listed, or patented as swamp or overflowed land under the swamp-land act, the title thereto remained in the United States, unless it had passed to the state as a riparian owner in virtue of the patents for the adjoining fractional sections; (b) that if the title had so passed to the state, it in like manner had passed thence with those sections to the defendants' grantors prior to the grant of 1893 to the levee district; and (c) that in view of the state's relinquishment under the compromise and settlement of 1895, the plaintiff, as a subsequent vendee of the district, was not in a position to question the riparian rights asserted by the defendants.

In the chancery court it was stipulated by counsel, for the purpose of avoiding the production of other evidence upon the subject, that 'the townships including Walker's lake, as meandered on the map,' were listed by the Secretary of the Interior as swamp lands, and patented to the state under the swamp-land act, and one of the controverted questions in the supreme court was whether this stipulation, rightly interpreted, meant that the listing and patenting embraced all the lands which would have been within the two townships if the township and subdivisional lines had been extended over the area represented on the plat as the lake, or only the surveyed lands; that is, those lying without the meander line. The court, having recourse to the plats of the survey as produced in evidence (which represented the townships as fractional by reason of the exclusion of the meandered area from the survey), as also to the government's well-known practice of patenting lands according to the legal subdivisions shown upon the plats, held that the stipulation should be taken as referring to the fractional townships, and not to the unsurveyed lands within the meander line; and in that...