Lamprey v. State
| Decision Date | 10 January 1893 |
| Citation | 53 N.W. 1139,52 Minn. 181 |
| Parties | Uri L. Lamprey et al. v. The State of Minnesota et al |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Submitted on briefs November 15, 1892
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.
Judgment affirmed.
Moses E. Clapp, Attorney General, H. W. Childs and W. N. Jones, for appellant.
The State of Minnesota relies upon its sovereignty as the origin and source of its title. The United States having designated the land as a lake by appropriate means, and this having continued until subsequent to the admission of the State into the Union, it was such an appropriation of the bed of the lake as to sever it from the public lands and to divest the Federal Government of all ownership in it, and the subsequent survey in 1860 was unwarranted, and the patent to Gilmore conveyed not title. The public surveys are conducted pursuant to specific rules and regulations prescribed by the government. Among which are the following: "You are also to meander in manner aforesaid, all lakes and deep ponds of the area of twenty-five acres and upwards; also navigable bayous, shallow ponds, readily to be drained or likely to dry up, are not to be meandered." 1 Lester's L. L. 7.
The United States has no ownership in the beds of meandered lakes within this state. It has but a qualified ownership of the public domain. The rights of the new states in this regard are in no sense inferior to those of the original states. The exclusive jurisdiction of the new states over the beds of its waters is one of the rights of sovereignty. The new states have, upon their admission into the Union, the same rights, sovereignty and jurisdiction as to the soil of their navigable waters, as the older states. Gould, Waters, § 39; In re Bevans, 17 Copp's L. O. 18; In re Burns, 2 Copp's L. L. 1090; Weber v. Harbor Commissioners, 18 Wall. 57; Barney v. Keokuk, 94 U.S. 324.
The beds of lakes have never been recognized as, nor are they in fact, part of the public domain, to which the power of disposition by the United States extends. The questions involved have been mentioned but never decided in this State. Huntsman v. Hendricks, 44 Minn. 423.
The reasons on which the common-law rules were founded, as applied to the waters of Great Britain, are really at variance with those which must actuate courts of this State in a case like the one at bar. Gould, Waters, § 80; Paine v. Woods, 108 Mass. 160; Guest v. Reynolds, 68 Ill. 478; Canal Commissioners v. People, 5 Wend. 423; Wheeler v. Spinola, 54 N.Y. 377.
The rule as to riparian ownership which is applied to ordinary fresh water streams cannot be applied to this lake. A boundary upon it does not carry title to its center but only to low-water mark. Such is the rule as to boundaries upon natural ponds and lakes. Boorman v. Sunnuchs, 42 Wis. 233; Stoner v. Rice, 121 Ind. 52; Edwards v. Ogle, 76 Ind. 308; Trustees of Schools v. Schroll, 120 Ill. 509.
If the plaintiffs get what land they bought and paid for, they are on an equality with all other citizens of the State who purchased from the Government. There is reason for holding that the thread of a stream is a boundary line, but the reasoning is not applicable in any respect to the case of a lake. In such a case the grant extends only to the water's edge. Bradley v. Rice, 13 Me. 201; Waterman v. Johnson, 13 Pick. 261; State of Indiana v. Milk, 11 F. 389; Mansur v. Blake, 62 Me. 41; State v. Gilmanton, 9 N.H. 461; Fletcher v. Phelps, 28 Vt. 257; Austin v. Rutland Railroad Co., 45 Vt. 215; Delaplaine v. Chicago & N.W. Ry. Co., 42 Wis. 214; Inhabitants of West Roxbury v. Stoddard, 7 Allen, 158; Jakeway v. Barrett, 38 Vt. 316; Wood v. Kelley, 30 Me. 47.
Stryker & Moore, being of counsel for parties in other cases involving the questions in controversy here, were permitted to file a brief, in which they said:
The riparian owner has title to low-water mark and not to the thread or center of the lake. Ladd v. Osborne, 79 Iowa. 93; Mariner v. Schulte, 13 Wis. 775; Nelson v. Butterfield, 21 Me. 229; Warren v. Chambers, 25 Ark. 120; Primm v. Walker, 38 Mo. 94; Commonwealth v. Vincent, 108 Mass. 441; Seaman v. Smith, 24 Ill. 521; Niles v. Burke, 1 Pugsley, (N. B.) 237; Burke v. Niles, 2 Hannay, (N. B.) 166; Zeller v. Yacht Club, 34 La. Ann. 838; 12 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 506; Gould, Waters, § 203.
The rule contended for by the plaintiffs fits well the exigencies of a case where the purchaser of land upon a deep and permanent body of water is given land in front of his original shore line, which in time becomes dry, through the recession of the water. He may have purchased his land because it was upon the lake, and he should have access to it. But the rule de minimis non curat lex, will not dispose of the case of land upon the shore of a Minnesota surface lake, which has none of the characteristics of permanency. Having no current, no distinct banks, no permanent watershed, it gradually -- because of improvements about it -- evaporates, percolates and finally dries up. Because of these conditions it is incapable of true accretions or relictions.
The Minnesota cases have covered the following grounds, but they have gone no further: The meander line is not a boundary. The riparian proprietor upon streams navigable in fact, and upon the Great Lakes, owns the land in fee to the low-water mark. Schurmeier v. St. Paul & Pac. R. Co., 10 Minn. 82, (Gil. 59;) Railroad Co. v. Schurmeir, 7 Wall. 272; St. Paul, S. & T. F. R. Co. v. First Div. St. Paul & Pac. R. Co., 26 Minn. 31; Everson v. City of Waseca, 44 Minn. 247; Wait v. May, 48 Minn. 453.
And though the riparian proprietor does not take title in fee below low water, he is entitled to enjoy riparian rights incident to the land, and he may disassociate such rights from the shore line, and convey them to persons having no interest in the original riparian estate. Brisbine v. St. Paul & Sioux City R. Co., 23 Minn. 114; Rippe v. Chicago, D. & M. R. Co., 23 Minn. 18; Carli v. Stillwater Street Ry. & T. Co., 28 Minn. 373; Union Depot, etc., Co. v. Brunswick, 31 Minn. 297; Miller v. Mendenhall, 43 Minn. 95; Hanford v. St. Paul & D. R. Co., 43 Minn. 104; Minneapolis Trust Co. v. Eastman, 47 Minn. 301; Gilbert v. Eldridge, 47 Minn. 210.
It is elementary law that the rights of the State in respect to land may be of two kinds, either governmental or proprietary. Only public waters can the State acquire in a governmental capacity; private waters and the land under them, can be acquired only in a proprietary way. "Public" is here synonymous with "navigable," and private with "nonnavigable." The lake under discussion was nonnavigable; it can therefore be acquired by the State only in a proprietary capacity. Navigable waters might have been transferred to the State in its governmental capacity, by the means suggested by counsel for the plaintiffs, but not so this shallow pool.
It seems to us evident that if the United States did not dispose of this land through the riparian patents, and we think it did not, title passed by the Gilmore patent, That patent can...
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