Osborne v. United States, No. 10755.

• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)
• Writing for the Court: DENMAN, STEPHENS, and HEALY, Circuit
• Citation: 145 F.2d 892
• Parties: OSBORNE et al. v. UNITED STATES.
• Decision Date: 24 November 1944
• Docket Number: No. 10755.

145 F.2d 892 (1944)

OSBORNE et al.
v.
UNITED STATES.

No. 10755.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

November 24, 1944.

Woolf & Shute, of Phoenix, Ariz., for appellants.

Norman M. Littell, Asst. Atty. Gen., Frank E. Flynn, U. S. Atty., and Charles A. Carson, Sp. Atty., Dept. of Justice, all of Phoenix, Ariz., and Vernon L. Wilkinson and S. Billingsley Hill, Attys., Dept. of Justice, both of Washington, D. C., for appellee.

Before DENMAN, STEPHENS, and HEALY, Circuit judges.

145 F.2d 893

STEPHENS, Circuit Judge.

The Osbornes, appellants herein, were in possession of a contiguous area of stock grazing land consisting of land owned by them, land leased by them, and land in the Kaibab National Forest under permit (36 Code of Federal Regulations, § 231.9) issued to them. Before the institution of this litigation the national forest land under permit was declared appropriated for military purposes.¹ All of such contiguous lands, except certain rights therein which need not here be noticed, were included in one eminent domain proceeding filed in the district court by the government, and the government promptly took possession.

At the trial the Osbornes sought to prove, and by proffered instructions sought to have the jury instructed to award them, damages for the value of their grazing privileges covering the national forest land taken and as well damages for severance. The court rejected such proof and such proffered instructions, and the Osbornes appeal claiming reversible error.

The error claimed does not in any manner refer to the court's rejection of proof but refers solely to the refusal of the court to give a proffered instruction and to the instruction given the jury concerning compensation and variance damages regarding the lands under the grazing permit. The government makes no point upon this score and submits the decision of the appeal upon the jury instruction points.

It was the theory of the government at the trial, and is here, that the grazing privileges were mere licenses, revokable at will without legal right to compel compensation, and that the Osbornes' only recourse is to proceed under the Act of July 9, 1942, C. 500, 56 Stat. 654, 43 U.S.C.A. § 315q. The trial court took this view of the problem. In § 315q it is provided that holders of grazing permits losing the license by government taking shall be paid such amounts "* * * as the head of the department * * * using the lands shall determine to be fair and reasonable * * *" and that "* * * such payments shall be deemed payment in full * * *" and that "* * * nothing herein in the Act contained shall be construed to create any liability not now existing against the United States."² On the other hand appellants, admitting the statutory right to apply to the Secretary of War for relief under such Act, claim that they acquired property by the issuance to them of the grazing permit and that they may rightly claim just compensation in the condemnation suit. They claim that the Secretary of War by the complaint did submit the fixing of such damages to the court in the instant case. The Osbornes assert that they will be deprived of the benefits of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution unless they are allowed their day in court upon the issue of compensation. The benefit of that right, say appellants, quoting from United States

145 F.2d 894

v. Miller, 317 U.S. 369, 63 S.Ct. 276, 279, 87 L.Ed. 336: "* * * means the full and perfect equivalent in money of the property taken. The owner is to be put in as good position pecuniarily as he would have occupied if his property had not been taken."

Of course, if 56 Stat. 654, 43 U.S.C.A. § 315q, is appellants' exclusive legal remedy, they cannot succeed in their appeal. It would appear that Congress understood the statute to constitute the sole remedy for those having their permit revoked as the Assistant Attorney General recommending its passage said: "Damages of this kind are not recoverable under the ordinary rules of law in a condemnation case because the stockmen have no vested interest in these rights. If such payments are to be made, provision therefor must be enacted by Congress." H.Rep. No. 2290, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. And the remarks of Senator Murdock in regard to the meaning of the proposed Act when it was being considered for enactment (88 Cong.Rec. 5594), and of Representative Robinson in this same regard (88 Cong. Rec. 5652), indicate that the view-point of these members of the Congress corresponds with that of the Assistant Attorney General.

We digress at this juncture to sketch briefly the applicable legal history of stock grazing on the public lands of the United States. In the pioneer or "emigrant" days of western America immense areas of unappropriated and otherwise unused territory were freely used by stockmen for grazing. The government not only refrained from objecting to this practice but in various ways encouraged it and in time this privilege, to use the words of the Supreme Court in Buford v. Houtz, 133 U.S. 320, 326, 10 S.Ct. 305, 307, 33 L. Ed. 618, became "* * * an implied license, growing out of the custom of nearly a hundred years * * *." This license was held to be the basis of various rights as between the licensee and other private individuals but not as between the licensee and the government. The same idea is expressed in Light v. United States, 220 U.S. 523, 535, 31 S.Ct. 485, 487, 55 L.Ed. 570, wherein, after reciting the practice, it is said: "And so, without passing a statute, or taking any affirmative action on the subject, the United States suffered its public domain to be used for such purposes. There thus grew up a sort of implied license that these lands, thus left open, might be used so long as the government did not cancel its tacit consent. * * * Its failure to object, however, did not confer any vested right on the complainant, nor did it deprive the United States of the power of recalling any implied license under which the land had been used for private purposes. Steele v. United States, 113 U.S. 128, 130, 5 S.Ct. 396, 28 L.Ed. 952; Wilcox v. Jackson ex dem. McConnel, 13 Pet. 498, 513, 10 L.Ed. 264." The principle expressed in Buford v. Houtz, supra, as reasserted in the Light case and again in Omaechevarria v. Idaho, 246 U.S. 343, 352, 38 S.Ct. 323, 327, 62 L.Ed. 763, is applied to grazing privileges in national forest regulations, for both the Light and the Omaechevarria cases concern...