Case ID: us-ct-cl_29/html/0559-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Brown", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

JOHN H. KINKEAD ET AL. v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [24, C. Cls. R., 459; 150 U. S. R., 483.]
    
      On the elaimanfs Appeal.
    
    The commissioners who formally transfer Alaska to the United States make a joint report, to which is attached a list of buildings reported to be private property, the owners having no title to the land, and their names not being given. One is subsequently sold to the claimants by a deed conveying the land on which it stands, the grantor being the Russian-American Company. Subsequently the-Government takes possession and insists that it passed to the United States by the terms of the treaty. Congress refer the claim to this court and direct that if the “parties acquired a valid title to said buildings” the court shall award them rent and indemnity.
    Tbe court below decides:
    1. The term “private, individual property,” used in the treaty (ceding Alaska to the United States), 30fch March, 1867 (15 Stat. L., 539), is exclusive of the Russian-American Company, and was so intended and mutually understood.
    2. The company prior to the cession had only a right of occupancy for the purposes of trade; buildings erected by it became a part of the realty, and the right to them ceased with the termination of the occupancy.
    3. The equities of the company, if any, were exclusively against Russia, and the United States were exempt by the terms of the treaty.
    4. The commissioners designated by Article IV were merely to make a formal delivery of the Territory and property; no act of theirs could vary or diminish the cession.
    5. No estoppel could arise from the lact that the commissioners reported a building to be a “private, individual property,” when the purchaser knew it to be property which had passed to the United States by the express terms of the treaty.
    
      6. Where the preamble to a private act recites that a certain building was private property, and the body of the act directs the court to determine whether the claimant acquired a valid title to it, the recital can not be taken as the legislative concession of ^ vital and material facts forming the basis of the whole controversy. (Act 17th January, 1887, 24 Stat. L., 358.)
    The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.
   Mr. Justice Brown

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, December 4, 1893.

Mr. Justice Shiras delivered a dissenting opinion, in which Mr. Justice Field concurred.