Rust Land Lumber Co v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 19 May 1919
• Docket Number: No. 171,171
• Citation: 250 U.S. 71,63 L.Ed. 850,39 S.Ct. 424
• Parties: RUST LAND & LUMBER CO. v. JACKSON et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

250 U.S. 71

39 S.Ct. 424

63 L.Ed. 850

RUST LAND & LUMBER CO.

v JACKSON et al.

No. 171.

Argued March 4, 1919.

Decided May 19, 1919.

Messrs.Albert M. Kales, Herbert Pope, Stephen A. Foster, and Harry Eugene Kelly, all of Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. Garner W. Green and Marcellus Green, both of Jackson, miss., and Gerald Fitz Gerald, of Clarksdale, Miss., for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice PITNEY delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case was brought on for argument immediately following Arkansas v. Mississippi, No. 7, Original, 250 U. S. 39, 39 Sup. Ct. 422, 63 L. Ed. ——, this day disposed of.

It was a replevin suit, brought in the circuit court of one of the counties of Mississippi by defendants in error to recover certain timber taken by plaintiff in error from their possession under a claim of ownership. They recovered a verdict and judgment in the circuit court, and the judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the state, without opinion (73 South. 345). Ownership of the timber was deemed to depend upon the ownership of the land from which it had been cut; and this was in dispute, and according to the theory of plaintiff in error was dependent upon the location of the state boundary. The land lay in the Mississippi river bottom, in the vicinity of Horseshoe Bend, where a portion of the former channel had been abandoned as the result of a sudden change that occurred in the year 1848; the river having broken through the neck of the Bend and formed a new channel there, with the result that in the course of time the former channel around the Bend was abandoned and in large part filled up, and its location as it was prior to the avulsion has become, after the lapse of so many years, difficult of ascertainment. The adjoining states whose common boundary is marked by the river at this point are in dispute as to its former location, and also as to whether the boundary ought to follow the middle of the former main channel of navigation or rather a line equidistant from the banks of the river at ordinary stage of water. To determine this controversy, the suit between the states was brought in this court, and it is still pending.

It is the contention of plaintiff in error that the judgment in the present case was based upon the determination of an issue which necessarily involved the location of the interstate boundary; and our first inquiry must be whether the judgment of the Supreme Court of Mississippi herein is reviewable in this court by writ of error. The judgment was rendered December 23, 1916, after the taking effect of the Act of September 6, 1916 (chapter 448, § 2, 39 Stat. 726), amendatory of section 237, Judicial Code (Act March 3, 1911, c. 231, 36 Stat. 1156 [Comp. St. § 1214]), and hence is reviewable here, if at all, only by virtue of that act and in accordance with its provisions.

It is asserted that the issue involving the location of the boundary line between the states was submitted to the jury under instructions from the trial judge based upon a theory inconsistent with the true principle of decision as laid down by this court in Iowa v. Illinois, 147 U. S. 1, 13 Sup. Ct. 239, 37 L. Ed. 55, Arkansas v. Tennessee, 246 U. S. 158, 38 Sup. Ct. 301, 62 L. Ed. 638, L. R. A. 1918D, 258, and Cissna v. Tennessee, 246 U. S. 289, 38 Sup. Ct. 306, 62 L. Ed. 720, and that thereby plaintiff in error was deprived of a right, privilege, or immunity claimed under the Constitution of the United States and treaties made thereunder. Even if the record showed that such a right, privilege, or immunity was properly set up and claimed in the state court, it of course is not maintained, nor could it be, that under section 237, Judicial Code, as amended, a federal question of this character would give us jurisdiction to review the resulting judgment by writ of error. Were that the only federal question, clearly it would at most furnish ground for a review by certiorari.

But it is insisted that the Supreme Court of the state, in the course of its review of the judgment of the circuit court, rendered an adverse decision upon the question of the validity of an authority...