Kate Archer v. Greenville Sand Gravel Company
| Decision Date | 06 April 1914 |
| Docket Number | No. 271,271 |
| Citation | 233 U.S. 60,58 L.Ed. 850,34 S.Ct. 567 |
| Parties | KATE C. ARCHER, Petitioner, v. GREENVILLE SAND & GRAVEL COMPANY et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Percy Bell and T. M. Miller for petitioner.
Messrs. John W. Yerkes, George E. Hamilton, and John J. Hamilton for respondents.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 61-63 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice McKenna delivered the opinion of the court:
Bill in equity to restrain respondent, herein called the Gravel Company, from trespassing upon the lands of petitioner, herein called plaintiff, and from taking sand and gravel therefrom. The bill also prayed for discovery of the amount of gravel which had been taken and an accounting therefor.
The bill alleges the ownership of the lands by plaintiff, and describes them by section, range, and township, and as 'lying west of the levee along the river front . . . and fronting on the said Mississippi river,' excepting therefrom two strips 100 feet wide each. That lying in the bed of the river in front of the lands and between the bank of the stream and the thread of the river are valuable deposits of sand and gravel which, under the laws of Mississippi, are on the lands of plaintiff, her right and title extending to the lands under the river to the thread of the stream.
That the Gravel Company entered into a contract with the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company to supply sand and gravel for the purpose of grading and raising the line of the railroad, and that the Gravel Company employed the E. A. Voight Company to dredge from the bed of the river in front of the lands of plaintiff, and between the river bank and the thread of the stream, the sand and gravel required by it. That the Voight Company is dredging the same over the protest of plaintiff, and has taken therefrom large quantities of sand and gravel which it has delivered to the Gravel Company, and the latter company is selling the same to the public and to the railroad company.
That the Gravel Company has refused to cease dredging or to make compensation therefor. That petitioner does not know how much of such material has been taken, but great quantities thereof have been taken, the amounts of which are peculiarly within the knowledge of the Gravel Company.
That the dredging constitutes a continuing trespass upon the lands and property of plaintiff, and she is entitled to have the same restrained and to an injunction and accounting, and that she is remediless except in a court of equity. She prayed for such relief.
The deeds constituting her title were attached to the bill. The deed conveying title to her, after describing the lands and stating they consisted of 1,300 acres, contained the expression, 'excepting such parts thereof as have been washed away by the river.'
The suit, on the petition of the Gravel Company, was removed to the United States circuit court for the southern district, western division, of the state of Mississippi, in which court the Gravel Company filed a demurrer under nine specifications, alleging want of equity in the bill because of an adequate remedy at law, and want of substance in it because petitioner was not the owner of the sand and gravel in the bed of the river.
The demurrer was sustained, and as plaintiff declined to amend her bill, a decree was entered dismissing it. The decree was affirmed by the circuit court of appeals without opinion. A petition for rehearing was made, which was denied without comment, and we are without knowledge of the views of the lower courts or of the grounds upon which their judgments were based, except that counsel for plaintiff asserts the circuit court sustained the demurrer 'solely on the ground of the jurisdiction of the court.'
The grounds of demurrer, we think, and the contentions of the parties, present two propositions—(1) the ritht of plaintiff to relief in equity and (2) that she does not show ownership of the property in question as a matter of law. In the latter is involved the question whether a grant of lands bounded by the waters of the Mississippi river, a navigable stream above tidewater, extends to the thread of the channel.
The first proposition is easily disposed of, and, passing by the prayer for discovery and an accounting, we think the bill shows a continuing trespass of such nature and of such character of injury that remedies at law by actions for damages would be inadequate, and would, besides, entail repeated litigation. Warren Mills v. New Orleans Seed Co. 65 Miss. 391, 7 Am. St. Rep. 671, 4 So. 298. Nor is this conclusion disturbed by the fact urged by the Gravel Company, that plaintiff prays for an injunction to be granted only after the hearing of the cause, and although then the rights of the contestants may be finally adjudicated in her favor or the dredging might cease before that time. The contention is somewhat strange. A plaintiff's right of suit cannot be defeated by a mere supposition that he or she may be successful, or that the defendant may cease to offend against the right asserted. It is in the hope of one or the other of such results that the suit is brought against a present or threatened violation of rights. If wrongs are endured in the meantime, there is no loss of rights or remedies.
We are therefore brought to the second proposition, Is plaintiff the owner of the sand and the gravel in the bed of the river?
The law of Mississippi is an element in the case. It first found elaborate discussion and decision in Morgan v. Reading, 3 Smedes & M. 366, and it was held that the common law was adopted for the government of the Mississippi territory, and that the line of the territory was the middle of the Mississippi river, and that it hence followed that the rights of riparian owners on the east shore must be determined in the state of Mississippi by the common law, and that it was a principle of that law 'that he who owns the bank, owns to the middle of the river, subject to the easement of navigation.' 3 Kent, Com. 5th ed. 427, and notes were cited.
The case involved the right of the owner of the bank of the river to charge for mooring purposes on the river above low water mark. The right was sustained upon the principle which we have stated above.
The same principle was announced in the Magnolia v. Marshall, 39 Miss. 109. The case was said by the court to be identical in its facts with Morgan v. Reading. The opinion is too long to review or to quote from at any length. It left no case or authority unreviewed, nor any consideration untouched, and carefully distinguished the public and private interest in the Mississippi river, the court saying: ...
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