Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/177/523/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 16:12:18+00:00

Document:
The fact that, in a state court, plaintiff and defendant make adverse claims to a mining location under the mining laws of the United States (Rev.Stat. §2325) does not, of itself, present a federal question within the meaning of Rev.Stat. § 709.
Where the plaintiff based his right to recover upon an act of Congress suspending the forfeiture of mining claims for failure to do the required amount of work, and the decision of the court was in favor of the right claimed by him under this statute, the defendant is not entitled to a writ of error from this Court to review such finding.
This was a suit begun in the District Court for the Fourth Judicial District of Nevada by Nesbitt, as part owner of the Fraction mine, against one William Davidson, the alleged locator of the Sleeper mining claim, covering the same ground as the Fraction mine, to quiet plaintiff's title and that of his co-tenants to the Fraction mine and to recover a money judgment against the defendant.
The complaint alleged that the plaintiff and his co-owners were tenants in common, and since May 15, 1892, had been in possession of the Fraction mining claim pursuant to the laws of the United States, and that the defendant also claimed a right to possession upon the alleged location of a certain mining claim called by him the Sleeper mine, that such location was made subsequent to the location of the Fraction mine, and that the plaintiff had protested in the land office at Carson City against the issuance of a patent to the defendant.
The answer denied the ownership and possession of the plaintiff of the Fraction mine, and alleged as a defense the invalidity of the proceedings under which Nesbitt and his cotenants had acquired the titles of the original locators to the Fraction mine.
Defendant, known as De Lamar's Nevada Gold Mining Company (hereinafter referred to as the mining company), claims title to the property in question through an application filed by Davidson in the land office at Carson City, in pursuance of Rev.Stat. § 2325, for a patent to the Sleeper mine, against the issue of which patent plaintiff Nesbitt filed an adverse claim as to so much of the Sleeper mine as was embraced within the boundaries of the Fraction mine.
Plaintiff Nesbitt took title to the Fraction mine through a location made May 12, 1892, by W. De Beque, H. Stevens, and A. Borth, who, it appeared, performed all the acts required to make a valid location. Plaintiff claimed that he and George Nesbitt, his brother, had acquired all the right, title, and interest of De Beque and Stevens to this mine through certain judgments recovered in a justice's court against De Beque and Stevens, upon which executions had been issued and a sale made to the Nesbitt brothers of their interests in the Fraction mine. This left the Nesbitts and Borth the owners of that mine as tenants in common. The court held these judgments to be void, but admissible for the purpose of showing or tending to show color of title and adverse possession in the Nesbitts and Borth. It further appeared that the Nesbitts and Borth did assessment work in each of the years 1895, 1896, and 1897 to the full amount required be law (§ 2324); that no work was done in either of the years 1893 and 1894, but that the Nesbitt brothers, in December of each of said years, had a notice recorded in the county recorder's office, where the original notice of the location of the Fraction mine was filed, declaring their intention in good faith to hold and work the mine. Meantime, however, the Sleeper mine was located January 1, 1895, the boundaries of which took in the Fraction mine.
"upon a failure to comply with these conditions, the claim or mine upon which such failure occurred shall be open to relocation in the same manner as if no location of the same had ever been made."
"so that no mining claim which has been regularly located and recorded as required by the local laws and mining regulations shall be subject to forfeiture for nonperformance of the annual assessment for the year 1893,"
provided a notice of an intention to hold and work the claim be filed in the proper office. This act was extended to the year 1894 by a subsequent statute. 28 Stat. 114, c. 142. Plaintiff relied upon these statutes, and the court held that, the Nesbitt brothers and Borth having had the notice required by the statutes recorded, under an agreement between themselves recognizing each other as co-owners and tenants in common and under the honest belief of all three that the Nesbitt brothers had legally acquired all the interest of De Beque and Stevens by virtue of the sale made under these judgments, the mine had not been forfeited, and was not subject to relocation when the location of the Sleeper mine was made, and therefore that the location of such mine was invalid so far as it covered the Fraction mining claim.
Rev.Stat. § 2325, was not, in itself, sufficient to raise a federal question, since no dispute arose as to the legality of such location, except so far as it covered ground previously located, or as to the construction of this section. We have repeatedly held that, to sustain a writ of error from this Court, something more must appear than that the parties claim title under an act of Congress.
The subject is fully discussed and the prior authorities cited in the recent case of Blackburn v. Portland Gold Mining Company, 175 U. S. 571, which was also a contest between rival claimants of a mine under sections 2325 and 2326. It was held that the provision in section 2326 for the trial of adverse claims to a mining patent "by a court of competent jurisdiction" did not, in itself, vest jurisdiction in the federal courts, although, of course, jurisdiction would be sustained if the requirements of amount and diverse citizenship existed, and that the judgment of the supreme court of the state in such case could not be reviewed in this Court simply because the parties were claiming rights under a federal statute. A like ruling was made in the still later case of Florida Central & Peninsular Railroad v. Bell, 176 U. S. 321. See also California Powder Works v. Davis, 151 U. S. 389.
under a particular statute of the United States the validity, construction, or applicability of which was made the subject of dispute in the state court, and the decision upon such statute must have been adverse to the plaintiff in error. No federal question was presented by the pleadings in the case, and the whole gravamen of defendant's argument was not the denial to it of any right under the mining laws of the United States, but the invalidity of the proceedings under which the Nesbitt brothers had acquired the interest of De Beque and Stevens in the Fraction mine.
Congress was drawn in question, but to prevent states from frittering away the authority of the federal government by limiting too closely the construction of federal statutes. Hence, the writ of error will only lie where the decision is adverse to the right claimed. To the same effect are Dover v. Richards, 151 U. S. 658, 151 U. S. 666; Sayward v. Denny, 158 U. S. 180; Jersey City & Bergen Railroad v. Morgan, 160 U. S. 288; Rae v. Homestead Loan & Guaranty Co., 176 U. S. 121; Abbott v. Tacoma Bank of Commerce, 175 U. S. 409.
Except so far as the case under consideration required a construction of the above-mentioned acts of Congress suspending the forfeiture of mining claims, the questions were purely of a local nature, and not subject to review in this Court.

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