Ledoux v. Forester

• Decision Date: 22 May 1899
• Citation: 94 F. 600
• Parties: LEDOUX v. FORESTER et al.
• Court: United States Circuit Court, District of Washington

94 F. 600

LEDOUX v. FORESTER et al.

United States Circuit Court, D. Washington, Eastern Division.

May 22, 1899

Heyburn Price, Heyburn & Doherty, for complainants.

Albert Allen, for defendants.

HANFORD District Judge.

The complainant asserts that he has a superior title to the mining ground in controversy, as the purchaser from one George W. Elliott of the Minnie lode mining claim, which was located by said Elliott, through an agent named McCann, on the 22d day of April, 1899, and that he is in possession of said ground, and has made large expenditures in prospecting and developing the claim; the date of said location being about three weeks prior to the location of the Ben Tillman claim by the defendants, covering part of the same ground. The validity of the complainant's title is disputed on two grounds, viz.: (1) The location of the Minnie claim was contrary to section 2320, Rev. St U.S., because no discovery of a vein or lode of quartz or other rock in place, bearing any of the precious metals, had been made within the boundary of the claim at the time of the location thereof, or at any time previous t the location of the Ben Tillman claim; (2) the locator of the Minnie claim failed to comply with the requirements of section 2324, Rev St. U.S., in this: That said claim was not so marked upon the ground that the boundaries thereof could be readily traced.

The sections of the Revised Statutes referred to contain, among other provisions, the following:

'Sec. 2320. * * * A mining-claim located after the tenth day of May, eighteen hundred and seventy-two, whether located by one or more persons, may equal, but shall not exceed one thousand five hundred feet in length along the vein or lode; but no location of a mining-claim shall be made until the discovery of the vein or lode within the limits of the claim located. * * *

'Sec. 2324. The miners of each mining-district may make regulations not in conflict with the laws of the United States, or with the laws of the state or territory in which the district is situated, governing the location, manner of recording, amount of work necessary to hold possession of a mining-claim, subject to the following requirements: The location must be distinctly marked on the ground so that its boundaries can be readily traced. * * * '

It is admitted that whatever was done in the matter of locating the Minnie claim was prior in point of time to the initiation of any rights claimed by the defendants, and no question is raised as to compliance with the laws and regulations as to notices and recording, and other steps necessary to the valid location of a quartz mining claim, except in the particulars above specified; and there is no question as to the right of the defendants to prevail in this case, and to have a patent issued to them for the ground which they claim, in case it shall be determined that the location of the Minnie claim was void for either or both of the above-specified reasons.

Mr McCann, who represented Mr. Elliott, the complainant's vendor, in locating the Minnie claim, has been...