Lamprey v. State

• Decision Date: 10 January 1893
• Citation: 52 Minn. 181
• Parties: URI L. LAMPREY <I>et al.</I> <I>vs.</I> THE STATE OF MINNESOTA <I>et al.</I>
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

52 Minn. 181

URI L. LAMPREY et al. vs. THE STATE OF MINNESOTA et al.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Submitted on briefs November 15, 1892.

Decided January 10, 1893.

Appeal by the defendant, the State of Minnesota, from a judgment of the District Court of Ramsey County, Otis, J., entered April 8, 1892.

The plaintiffs, Uri L. Lamprey and Jeanne R. Lamprey, his wife, on May 16, 1890, filed their complaint against Oscar M. Metcalf, and made the State of Minnesota a party, under 1878 G. S. ch. 74, § 45. This statute provides that the state may be made a party to an action for the partition of real property. The complaint stated that plaintiffs owned forty-nine fiftieths of three hundred acres of land (describing it) situate in West St. Paul, worth $250,000, and that Metcalf owned the remaining one-fiftieth part, and it prayed partition between them. The complaint further stated that the State of Minnesota claimed some estate or interest in the land adverse to the title of plaintiffs, but that the claim was unfounded and void. It also prayed judgment that the State had no title to or interest in the land. The Summons and Complaint were served upon the Attorney General, and in due time the Governor answered on behalf of the State, claiming the locus in quo was in the year 1853 a natural lake, and the title in the Federal Government. That the surrounding shore was surveyed and the lake meandered in September, 1853, under the direction and supervision of the Secretary of the Interior. That by the Act of Feb. 26, 1857, authorizing a state government (11 U. S. Stat. ch. 60, § 2) the lake was made a common highway forever, free to all citizens, and the title vested in this State, and that it has ever since continued therein. On the trial on February 25, 1892, plaintiffs proved, that in 1856, the Federal Government sold and patented to purchasers, without any reservation whatever, all the land surrounding this lake, and that the plaintiffs and Metcalf had since purchased these shore lands from the patentees. They further proved that in the year 1860, the lake had so far receded that the Federal Government surveyed the land between the then shore and the old meander line; and on March 20, 1873, sold and patented this strip to Charles D. Gilmore, who subsequently conveyed it to plaintiffs; that the lake had slowly and imperceptibly receded and diminished in size; that the bed of the lake was now dry land, and they claimed that the rights of the public therein were extinguished. At the trial the parties stipulated as to the facts. As this land had never been claimed by, or certified to the State, as swamp land under the Act of Congress of March 12, 1860, (12 U. S. Stat. ch. 5,) the Attorney General abandoned all claim to the land under that Act. The trial court found for the plaintiffs, and ordered that judgment be entered as demanded in the complaint. This was done, and the State appeals.

Moses E. Clapp, Attorney General, H. W. Childs and W. N. Jones, for appellant.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

U. L. Lamprey, pro se.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

MITCHELL, J.

In 1853, at the time of making the United States survey of sections four, (4,) five, (5,) eight, (8,) and nine, (9,) township twenty-eight, (28,) range twenty-two, (22,) there was in the center of these four sections a shallow, nonnavigable lake, comprising about three hundred acres, which the government surveyor meandered, in accordance with the rules and instructions of the department, "to meander all lakes and deep ponds of the area of twenty-five acres and upwards," (1 Lester, Land Laws, 714,) and in doing so ran the meander lines substantially along the margin of the lake. The lake and the meanders thereof appear on the official plat of the survey, and are referred to in the field notes. By this survey the lands bordering on the lake were subdivided into fractional governmental subdivisions and lots, the lake forming the boundary thereof on one side. The survey and plat were approved by the secretary of the interior in 1854. Subsequently, and prior to 1856, the United States, by patents, conveyed, without reservation or restriction, to various parties, all of these lands, which were described in the patents by their governmental subdivision or lot, according to the plat and survey, which were referred to in, and made part of, the patents. By sundry mesne conveyances from the patentees, the plaintiffs and defendant Metcalf have become the owners of all these riparian lands. Since the survey in 1853 the lake has been, through natural causes, gradually and imperceptibly drying up, until now its former bed is all dry land.

In 1860, after the lake had partially dried up, the United States land department caused a survey to be made of the land constituting that part of the former bed of the lake situate between the original meander line and the then existing margin of the lake, and in 1873 assumed to issue a patent therefor to one Gilmore, who subsequently conveyed to plaintiffs and Metcalf, who assert title to the former bed of the lake both as grantees of the riparian lands according to the original survey of 1853, and also, in part, under the Gilmore patent. The state, on the other hand, claims that the Gilmore patent is void, and that the patents, according to the original United States survey, only conveyed the land to the margin of the lake, as it then existed, and that the former bed of the lake belongs to the state, in its sovereign capacity. In the pleadings the state also asserted title under the "swamp-land grant" from the United States; but this claim was abandoned on the trial, and very properly so, because, for manifest reasons, it was entirely untenable.

It will be thus seen that the question presented is, what rights in or to the soil under water does the patentee of land bounded by a meandered inland lake acquire by his patent? The same question was suggested in Huntsman v. Hendricks, 44 Minn. 423, (46 N. W. Rep. 910,) but not decided, in view of its great importance, and the fact that it was not fully argued by counsel.

The importance of the question, both to the public and to riparian owners, is apparent, when we consider that there are many thousands of such lakes in this state, which, although most of them may not be adapted for navigation, in its ordinary, commercial sense, have been, from the earliest settlement of the state, resorted to and used by the people as places of public resort, for purposes of boating, fishing, fowling, cutting ice, etc., and the further fact that observation teaches that the waters of many of these lakes are, from natural causes, slowly but imperceptibly receding, so that a part of what was their bed, when surveyed, has, or in time will, become dry land.

The right of the public to use these lakes for the purposes referred to, as well as the right of riparian owners to these relicted lands, and consequently their right of access to the water after such reliction occurs, are therefore all involved in the question presented. The question ought to be approached and considered from a practical, as well as legal, standpoint; and as the common law is a body of principles, and not of mere arbitrary rules, the effort should be to apply the spirit and reason of these principles to the state of facts presented.

There are certain matters which are so well settled that they may be summarily disposed of at the outset. Without troubling ourselves to consider what were the rights of the United States in these waters before they conveyed the lands bordering on them, it is well settled that, having disposed of lands bordering on a meandered lake by patent, without reservation or restriction, they have nothing left to convey, and consequently the land department was thereafter without jurisdiction, and the Gilmore patent, issued in 1873, was inoperative and void; also that a meander line is not a boundary, but that the water whose body is meandered is the true boundary, whether the meander line in fact coincides with the shore or not; also, that grants by the United States of its public lands bounded on streams or other waters, made without reservation or restriction, are to be construed according to the law of the state in which the lands lie; and, consequently, whether the land forming the beds of these lakes belongs to the state, or to the owners of the riparian lands, is a question to be determined entirely by the laws of Minnesota. In support of these propositions, we need only cite Hardin v. Jordan, 140 U. S. 371, (11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 808, 838,) and Mitchell v. Smale, 140 U. S. 406, (11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 819, 840.)

In St. Paul, S. & T. F. R. Co. v. St. Paul & P. R. Co., 26 Minn. 31, (49 N. W. Rep. 303,) this court was led, from certain dicta in Railroad Co. v. Schurmeir, 7 Wall. 272, to suppose that the supreme court of the United States meant to hold otherwise as to patents of public lands bordering on navigable streams; but that no such doctrine has been adopted by that court is evident from Barney v. Keokuk, 94 U. S. 324, and subsequent cases.

We therefore approach the question in this case untrammeled by the binding authority of any federal decisions, or even by any direct decisions in this state, in which this is still an open question. What the relative rights of the state and of riparian owners in the waters and beds of these lakes are, largely depends upon the question whether the rules of law as to the rights of grantees of lands bordering on running streams are applicable to grants of land bordering on lakes. The early English decisions, dealing, as they did, mainly with arms of the sea and rivers in which the tide ebbed and flowed, furnish but little light on this subject. In many of the states of the Union, this branch of the law is still somewhat unsettled, and, as said in Huntsman v. Hendricks, supra, the decisions are somewhat...