Case ID: us-ct-cl_31/html/0458-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Harlan", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

BENJAMIN HEALEY v. THE UNITED STATES.
    (29 C. Cls. R., 115; 160 U. S. R., 136.)
    
      On the defendants’ Appeal.
    
    In 1889 the claimant files a declaration of liis intention to reclaim a tract of desert land, being part of the alternate reserved sections along the line of a railroad. At the time the General Land Office holds these railroad lands to come under the provision of the Revised Statutes, §2357, ‘‘that the price to he paid for alternate reserved, lands along the line of railroads shall he ‡2.50 per aere.” The claimant pays that price without objection or protest and acquires his title. He now contends that taking up land in alternate sections under the desert-land act does not subject him to a payment of $2.50 per acre, and he seeks to recover back half of his purchase money.
    The court below decides:
    1. The provision of the Revised Statutes (§ 2357) declaring “that the price to he paid for alternáis reserved lands along the line of railroads shall he §í¡.50 per acre” applies only to lands disposed of at auction or private sale for cash, and has no application to lands disposed of under the Desert Land Act, Sd March, 1877 (19 Stat. L., p. 377).
    2. Where the law is unsettled and in doubt, money paid in mistake of its true construction may be considered in the nature of a compromise, and can not bo recovered back, unless it be paid between persons who do not stand on equal footing. A citizen buying public lands and a receiver of the land office acting under instructions of the Commissioner do not stand on an equal footing. Money paid for land at a higher price than the, true construction of the statute requires may be recovered back, though paid without objection or protest.
    The decision of the court below is reversed. The Supreme Court now holds that “if entries initiated under the act of 1877 and prior to the act of 1891 could be completed, upon the terms fixed by the latter act as to price of desert lands,” and “ if the plaintiff is not precluded from recovering money voluntarily paid by him, with full knowledge of all the facts, then the judgment of the court below was right,” but that the act of 1891 did not authorize the lands in dispute to be sold at $1.25 per acre where the proceedings to obtain them were begun before its passage, and left the price to be paid governed by the law in force at the time the entry was made, i. e., the law regulating the price of the reserved sections of railroad lands.
    December 2, 1896.
   Mr. Justice Harlan

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court