Martin v. Platte Valley Sheep Company
| Decision Date | 25 April 1904 |
| Citation | 12 Wyo. 432,76 P. 571 |
| Parties | MARTIN ET AL. v. PLATTE VALLEY SHEEP COMPANY |
| Court | Wyoming Supreme Court |
Rehearing Denied December 31, 1904, Reported at: 12 Wyo. 432 at 458.
ERROR to the District Court, Laramie County, HON. RICHARD H. SCOTT Judge.
The facts are stated in the opinion.
Judgment modified and affirmed.
W. R Stoll, for plaintiffs in error.
Owners of live stock, under the license of the government of the United States, have a right to let their live stock graze at will upon the public domain adapted to such use, not enclosed or otherwise withdrawn from such use by the government; and the enjoyment of such right will be protected by any proper remedy of the courts.
A distinction between stock roaming at will and being driven and held upon the land of another is well established. The owner of live stock upon the public domain may turn his stock loose and permit them to roam at will; and if such stock, in roaming at will, feed upon, go upon or cross the unfenced lands of some private person, such person can have neither an action for damages in trespass nor an action by injunction to restrain such trespasses, so long as such live stock are not deliberately driven, herded or held upon such land. And the same principle applies whenever, in the proper handling of his live stock, the owner merely drives his stock upon or crosses the land of another, and when he does not do so exclusively for the purpose of depasturing the lands of such other person.
It is unlawful for any person to enclose government land to which he has no title or color of title, and it is equally unlawful for any person to seek to appropriate to his own exclusive use any such government land, or to obstruct or prevent full passage or transit over the same by means of fences or otherwise. (23 U. S. Stat. at Large, 321; Buford v. Houtz, 133 U.S. 320; U. S. v. Brighton Ranche Co., 26 F. 218; U. S. v. Buford (Utah, July 6, 1892), 30 P. 433; U. S. v. Cleveland & Col. C. Co., 33 F. 323; U. S. v. Camfield, 59 F. 562; Camfield v. U.S. 66 F. 101.) It is believed that this court would no longer sustain the doctrine announced by the Supreme Court of this State, in the case of U. S. v. Douglas-Willan Sartoris Co., 3 Wyo., 287; and certainly, as to public lands within this State, the decisions of the Federal Courts would govern. (Cameron v. U.S. 148 U.S. 301; U. S. v. Bisel, 8 Mont., 20; U. S. v. Flaherty, 8 Mont., 31; Barclay v. U.S. 3 Wash., 522; U. S. v. Cook, 36 F. 896; U. S. v. Felderward, 36 F. 490; State v. Goodnight, 70 Tex. 682.)
An injunction will never be permitted where it is sought not in good faith, but for some ulterior purpose. It is equally incompetent for any person to seek a remedy by injunction, for the purpose of enabling him thereby to violate a fundamental principle of the law or the positive enactments of a statute. It has long been a familiar principle, running through all branches of the law, that the law will not permit the accomplishing by indirect means of that which it forbids the doing of directly. It is a fundamental maxim of equity that he who comes into equity must come in with clean hands; hence, it is always permissible, when a plaintiff seeks any remedy in equity, to show that the action which he brings is not brought in good faith. The maxim must be applied to the transaction, and must not go so far as to involve independent matters, but it does involve all matters which are properly included in the transaction in question. (1 Pom. Eq., Secs. 397, 398, 399, 400-404; Bisp. Princ. Eq., Sec. 42; Comstock v. Johnson, 46 N.Y. 615; Mich. Pipe Co. v. Fremont, &c., 111 F. 284.) It cannot, in principle, make any difference whether an attempt to appropriate the public domain to one's self and to exclude others from it, is manifested by the erection of a fence, by the driving of another's cattle off the domain, by herding them off, or in any other manner. The point is that no individual has a right to exclude others from the public domain, and thereby appropriate the same to his own use. If the plaintiff, instead of erecting a fence, had driven defendant's cattle off the government land involved, there is no question but that the defendants could obtain an injunction to prevent the same being done, or could maintain their actions against the plaintiff, according to the nature of the injury.
If any individual unlawfully attempts to interfere with the cattle of another roaming at will upon the public domain, such other person has his appropriate remedy in the courts. If, then, it is true that the plaintiff could not appropriate to itself the public domain in question, by driving defendants' cattle off the same, clearly, it could not appropriate to itself the public domain by erecting a fence so as to exclude such cattle therefrom.
It must necessarily follow in this case that, if this suit was instituted to accomplish such results, then there was a want of good faith on the part of the defendant, and the defendant has violated the familiar maxims herein referred to.
It was clearly a defense to the action for plaintiffs in error to show either one or both of two things, viz: that by means of a fence, or otherwise, the defendant in error was seeking to prevent plaintiffs in error from pasturing their cattle upon any portion of the public domain; that the defendant in error was seeking to appropriate to itself portions of the public domain to the exclusion of plaintiffs in error, and that such was the object of defendant in error with relation to the designated portions of the public domain. By sustaining the demurrer to this second defense, this matter was taken out of the issues of the case, and in this respect we submit the trial court erred.
Notwithstanding the fact that this defense was so excluded by the ruling of the trial court, it was impossible for the plaintiff below to attempt to establish its allegations without bringing in the matter of the fence; and the trial of the case, although limited to the matters not involved in the second defense, developed the fact that the purpose of the defendant in error was to appropriate the government lands to its own use and to exclude the plaintiffs in error therefrom, and that the action was not instituted in good faith by the defendant in error.
The government lands enclosed by this fence were lands upon which the plaintiffs in error had pastured their cattle as a part of the public domain for a long time previous to the existence of the defendant in error.
The evidence on behalf of defendant in error was insufficient to establish the allegations of the petition, and, consequently, its case failed. Each of plaintiffs in error was examined, and each denied, in any manner whatever, driving his cattle over or upon or across any of the lands of defendant in error, for any purpose whatever of having said cattle trespass upon said lands, or to eat or consume the feed or grass growing thereon, and were never so driven except when it became necessary to take the cattle off such land when said cattle were being driven by defendant in error's own employes from the southern part of the so-called pasture, for the purpose of turning them out of the fence at a distance of something like eight or nine miles from where the cattle were first originally taken by defendant in error's employes.
It also appears that all of plaintiffs in error were exceedingly careful, in turning their cattle inside defendant in error's fence, to turn them in only upon government land, or upon the land belonging to some of plaintiffs in error, and in no instance did they turn them in on defendant in error's land, although it was not at all necessary for them to observe this precaution.
Clearly, if defendant in error did not desire the cattle of plaintiffs in error to drift upon its lands, it should not have built the fence in question, for as long as the fence in question remained, so long would cattle within its boundaries, in course of time, drift upon portions of defendant in error's lands.
The defendant in error, in its evidence in chief, asked the witness, Wilson, the following question: "As a practical stockman, what is your judgment as to the number of cattle that can be supported on government land within the enclosure constituting the Platte Valley Sheep Company's pasture, for a period of five months, between November 1st and April 1st?" This question was objected to, and was improper under the issues in the case. The whole theory upon which the question was propounded was this: That defendant in error had a right to construct such fences as it saw fit, and to enclose within such fences as much government land as it saw fit, and then to turn as many of its stock within such enclosure as it saw fit, and thereby appropriate to its own use the pasture on such government land, and to keep every other stockman out of such enclosure and off such land. The case of Lazarus v. Phelps, 152 U.S. 81, does not authorize such claim.
Van Orsdel & Burdick, for defendant in error.
The proposition is conceded that a distinction exists in the law respecting the liability of the owner, between live stock roaming at will on the public domain and may wander upon the unfenced lands of a private owner, and live stock under the control of a herder deliberately driven upon such lands or permitted to go upon such lands while under the control of the herder. The...
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Weaver v. Richardson
... ... repeated trespasses. ( Martin v. Sheep Co., 12 Wyo ... 432; 3 Pomeroy's Eq. Juris ... ...
- Martin v. Platte Valley Sheep Company