Willcoxson v. United States

• Decision Date: 04 January 1963
• Docket Number: No. 16713-16715.,16713-16715.
• Citation: 313 F.2d 884
• Parties: Buck WILLCOXSON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America et al., Appellees. Buck WILLCOXSON, Appellant, v. Stewart L. UDALL, Secretary of the Interior, et al., Appellees. Buck WILLCOXSON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

313 F.2d 884 (1963)

Buck WILLCOXSON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America et al., Appellees.

Buck WILLCOXSON, Appellant, v. Stewart L. UDALL, Secretary of the Interior, et al., Appellees.

Buck WILLCOXSON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

Nos. 16713-16715.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued November 26, 1962.

Decided January 4, 1963.

Mr. John H. Pickering, Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. Max O. Truitt, Jr., and Thomas G. Watkinson, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellant.

Mr. S. Billingsley Hill, Atty., Dept. of Justice, with whom Ramsey Clark, Asst. Atty. Gen., Messrs. Roger P. Marquis and Ralph S. Boyd, Attys., Dept. of Justice, were on the brief, for appellee United States in Nos. 16713 and 16715, and appellee Udall in No. 16714.

Mr. Jack T. Conn, Ada, Okl., with whom Mr. William Amory Underhill, Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellee Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, Inc., in Nos. 16713 and 16714.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and BURGER and WRIGHT, Circuit Judges.

BAZELON, Chief Judge.

These three consolidated actions, decided below on cross motions for summary judgment, involve construction of the "Isolated Tracts Act," Rev.Stat. § 2455, as amended, 43 U.S.C. § 1171 (1958), and the regulations thereunder, 43 CFR Part 250. The Act provides in substance that the Secretary of the Interior may sell at public auction any isolated or disconnected parcel of the public domain, not exceeding a specified size, which in his judgment may properly be sold.¹ It also grants owners of contiguous land a preference right to buy such parcels and provides for equitable division by the Secretary in the event of competing preference rights. The Act does not, however, specify either the manner or the time in which the Secretary is to exercise his judgment whether it would be proper to sell a particular tract; nor does it provide for the vesting of rights in or passing of title to lands sold. These matters are covered by 43 CFR § 250.5² which provides in pertinent part that

"* * * until the issuance of a cash certificate, the authorized officer may at any time determine that the lands should not be sold, the applicant or any bidder has no contractual or other rights as against the United States, and no action taken will create any contractual or other obligation of the United States."

On September 23, 1952, Willcoxson filed in the Land and Survey Office of the Bureau of Land Management at Santa Fe, New Mexico, applications for the sale of two isolated tracts of land located in that State. In November 1952, the Manager of the Santa Fe Office received reports on the mineral qualities of the tracts from the Bureau's staff.³ No field examinations were made at that time. The reports stated that "although adjacent areas are now the scene of uranium mining activities, there are no known uranium mining activities within the immediate vicinity" of the tracts; and "recommended that, since it is in the public interest to dispose of these lands, the application s be approved and the lands offered in public sale." Accordingly the Manager of the Land Office held public sales of the two tracts on November 16 and 17, 1952.⁴ After completion of the various proceedings required by statute and regulation, including the adjustment of competing preference rights and payment of purchase price, Willcoxson was declared the "purchaser" of part of one tract on February 17, 1954, and of part of the other on January 31, 1955. Although the Manager could properly have issued cash certificates to Willcoxson, he did not do so because of a heavy backlog of work in the Santa Fe Land Office.

In May 1955, the Manager learned from Willcoxson that uranium prospectors were on the tracts.⁵ Relying on § 250.5, he informed Willcoxson that "action on these two applications has been suspended pending receipt of a report * * * as to the mineral character of the land." In January and February 1956, on the basis of field examinations, the Bureau staff reported to the Manager that "the subject land is potentially valuable for uranium," and "recommended that the land be classified as mineral in character * * *" and that the sales be cancelled and the applications rejected.

In decisions of April 12, 1956, the Manager declared that, "as a result of the reexamination, the subject land has been classified as mineral in character and prospectively valuable for uranium"; and concluded that, since mineral lands may not be sold,⁶ and inasmuch as cash certificates had not issued, the sales were "null and void." The Bureau of Land Management and the Secretary of the Interior affirmed.

On August 5, 1958, Willcoxson commenced the action in appeal No. 16714 (the first of the three cases now before us) to declare invalid the cancellation of the sales and to compel the Secretary to issue cash certificates. Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, Inc., claiming mining rights in one of the tracts, intervened to oppose granting of the relief sought.

The action in appeal No. 16715 was brought by Willcoxson against the United States on December 10, 1958,⁷ for $6,000,000 damages arising out of the allegedly illegal cancellation of the land sales.

Finally, on May 29, 1959, the United States instituted the action in appeal No. 16713 against both Willcoxson and Kerr-McGee, seeking, inter alia, a declaratory judgment that Willcoxson has no rights in the lands and that the claims of Kerr-McGee are not mature for judicial determination as against the United States. In the same action, Willcoxson crossclaims against Kerr-McGee for injunctive relief and an accounting for the value of minerals removed by Kerr-McGee.

The District Court held that under the regulation Willcoxson has no rights of any kind as against the United States." It granted the motion of the United States for summary judgment in No. 16713; dismissed Nos. 16714 and 16715 with prejudice; and held that the claims of Kerr-McGee to mining interests "are not yet mature for judicial determination as against the United States." Since Kerr-McGee has prosecuted no appeal, we rule only on the rights of Willcoxson.

Before this court, Willcoxson does not deny that the two tracts are valuable for minerals, nor does he challenge the propriety of a refusal to sell isolated tracts because of their uranium value. His basic contention is that the Secretary is required to exercise his discretion to sell an isolated tract before the sale proceedings and that once the sale has been held and a "purchaser" declared, he is precluded from changing his decision on the basis of newly discovered facts.

The Act contains no such direction. And the regulation provides that "until the issuance of a cash certificate, the authorized officer may at any time determine that the lands should not be sold * * *."⁸ There is no conflict between the regulation and the terms of the Act. But Willcoxson advances several arguments to avoid the regulation.

He first contends that in sales under the Isolated Tracts Act "equitable title vests in the purchaser when the price is paid"; that this "cash sale vesting rule is but a specific application of a general principle that when public land is placed in the market or otherwise opened to acquisition, a claimant who fulfills all requirements to perfect his claim thereupon becomes the equitable owner"; and that his equitable title could not be defeated by the subsequent findings as to the mineral qualities of the land. He relies on a line of Supreme Court cases which includes Wyoming v. United States, 255 U.S. 489, 41 S.Ct. 393, 65 L. Ed. 742 (1921); Payne v. New Mexico, 255 U.S. 367, 41 S.Ct. 333, 65 L.Ed. 680 (1921); Benson Mining & Smelting Co. v. Alta Mining & Smelting Co., 145 U.S. 428, 12 S.Ct. 877, 36 L.Ed. 762 (1892); and Atherton v. Fowler, 96 U.S. 513, 24 L.Ed. 732 (1878).

We agree with the court below that such cases are inapposite since they arose under statutes different from the Isolated Tracts Act. In those statutes Congress chose a method of granting interests in public lands whereby the recipients of the grants had only to prove they met the statutory requirements in order to obtain rights in the lands. Hence, "the power confided to the Secretary was not that of granting or denying a privilege * * *, but of determining whether an existing privilege conferred by Congress had been lawfully exercised." Wyoming v. United States, supra, 255 U.S. at 496, 41 S.Ct. at 395. It was with specific and we think limited reference to such statutes that the Court in Wyoming said: "if, when the claimant has done all that he is required to do to entitle him to receive the title, the land is not known to be mineral he acquires a vested right which no subsequent discovery of mineral will divest or disturb." Id. at 501, 41 S.Ct. at 396.

But in the Isolated Tracts Act, Congress chose a wholly different method for disposing of interests in the public domain. Instead of limiting the Secretary to "action * * * judicial in its nature and directed to an ascertainment and declaration" of the validity of compliance with the statutory requisites for acquiring the right, id. at 497, 41 S.Ct. at 395, Congress entrusted to the Secretary's discretion the...