Mountain View Mining Milling Company v. Fadden

• Decision Date: 25 March 1901
• Docket Number: No. 162,162
• Citation: 180 U.S. 533,45 L.Ed. 656,21 S.Ct. 488
• Parties: MOUNTAIN VIEW MINING & MILLING COMPANY, Appt. , v. W. D. McFADDEN, David O'Neil, Charles W. Vedder, and W. E. Harris
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

180 U.S. 533

21 S.Ct. 488

45 L.Ed. 656

MOUNTAIN VIEW MINING & MILLING COMPANY, Appt.,

v W. D. McFADDEN, David O'Neil, Charles W. Vedder, and W. E. Harris.

No. 162.

Submitted March 5, 1901.

Decided March 25, 1901.

Messrs. W. B. Heyburn and L. A. Doherty for appellant.

Messrs.A. B. Browne, Alex. Britton, and W. T. Stoll for appellees.

Mr. Chief Justice Fuller delivered the opinion of the court:

The Mountain View Mining & Milling Company had made application for a patent on a certain lode-mining claim in the land office at Spokane, Washington, against which McFadden and others duly filed their protest and adverse claim, and thereupon brought this action 'in aid of their said adverse claim, and to determine the right of possession,' in the superior court of Stevens county, Washington, which was removed on the mining company's petition into the circuit court of the United States for the district of Washington, but not on the ground of diverse citizenship. Plaintiffs moved to remand the cause, and the motion was denied.

The petition for removal set up 'that the controversy herein is a suit of a civil nature arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, brought in pursuance of the provisions of § 2326 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, providing for the filing of adverse claims against the application for patent for mining claims, and the bringing of suits in support of said adverse claims.'

The petition also set forth that the construction of two acts of Congress was involved, namely, an act approved July 1, 1892 (27 Stat. at L. 62, chap. 140), entitled 'An Act to Provide for the Opening of a Part of the Colville Reservation, in the State of Washington, and for Other Purposes,' and an act of February 20, 1896 (29 Stat. at L. 9, chap. 24), entitled 'An Act to Extend the Mineral Land Laws of the United States to Lands Embraced in the North Half of the Colville Indian Reservation.' But the jurisdiction of the circuit court on removal depended on plaintiffs' statement of their own claim, and that only disclosed an action brought in support of an adverse mining claim.

In Blackburn v. Portland Gold In. Co. 175 U. S. 571, 44 L. ed. 276, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 222, and Shoshone Min. Co. v. Rutter, 177 U. S. 505, 44 L. ed. 864, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 726, we held that a suit brought in support of an adverse claim under the Revised Statutes, §§ 2325, 2326, was not a suit arising under the laws of the United States in such a sense as to confer jurisdiction on the Federal court regardless of the citizenship of the parties.

It is conceded by counsel on both sides that those decisions are controlling, unless the circuit court was entitled to maintain jurisdiction by taking judicial notice of the fact 'that the Mountain View lode claim was located upon what had been or was an Indian reservation,' and 'of the act of Congress declaring the north half of the reservation, upon which the claim was located, to have been restored to the public domain;' notwithstanding no claim based on these facts was stated in the complaint. But the circuit court could not make plaintiff's case other than they made it by taking judicial notice of facts which they did not choose to rely on in their pleading. The...