Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/101/473/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 18:45:33+00:00

Document:
1. An injunction or a mandamus will not lie against an officer of the Land Department to control him in discharging an official duty which requires the exercise of his judgment and discretion.
2. A court will not, by reason of its jurisdiction of the parties, determine their respective rights to a tract of public land, which are the subject matter of a pending controversy whereof that department has rightfully taken cognizance, nor will it pass a decree which will render void a patent when it shall be issued.
3. Where the legal title is vested, the equities subject to which the patentee holds it may then be judicially enforced, and where that department has upon the uncontradicted facts committed an error of law by which the land has been awarded to a party to the prejudice of the right of another, the latter is entitled to relief.
4. Where, however, there was a mixed question of law and fact, and the court cannot separate it so as to ascertain what the mistake of law is, the decision of that department affirming the right of one of the contesting parties to enter a tract of public land is conclusive.
5. A. filed his bill in a state court, alleging that, having the requisite qualifications of a preemptor, he had settled upon a tract of public land, but that the proper register and receiver had refused to receive the purchase money and issue to him a certificate therefor solely upon the ground that the Department of the Interior had on appeal decided that the tract was not subject to preemption under the general preemption laws, and issued an order authorizing the entry of the tract by B., the defendant, who claimed the right to preempt it under a special act of Congress, by which he will be enabled to receive a patent therefor. The bill does not show what proofs were submitted by B., but alleges that, at the instigation of him and others, the Commissioner of the General Land Office fraudulently, and before the act passed, ordered the surveys of the lands covered by it to be withheld. The bill prayed that A. be declared to be the true owner of the tract and to have a paramount title thereto. B. demurred. Held that the bill was properly dismissed.
section of land, was erroneous, and praying a decree of the court declaring him to be its true owner and his right to the legal title paramount. The case was heard in the inferior state court on a demurrer to this petition, which was sustained, and the judgment there rendered against plaintiff was affirmed by the supreme court.
The grounds principally, if not exclusively, relied on by the counsel of plaintiff in this Court, who so faithfully and earnestly presented his case, are 1st, that the Land Department mistook the law of the case and thereby deprived plaintiff of a vested right in the land; 2d, that their decision was obtained by fraud.
matter was still in fieri, and under the control of the land officers.
We have repeatedly held that the courts will not interfere with the officers of the government while in the discharge of their duties in disposing of the public lands, either by injunction or mandamus. Litchfield v. Register and Receiver, 9 Wall. 552; Gaines v. Thompson, 7 Wall. 347; The Secretary v. McGarrahan, 9 Wall. 298.
After the United States has parted with its title, and the individual has become vested with it, the equities subject to which he holds it may be enforced, but not before. Johnson v. Towsley, 13 Wall. 72; Shepley v. Cowan, 91 U. S. 330.
"the decision of the officers of the land department, made within the scope of their authority, on questions of this kind, is, in general, conclusive everywhere, except when considered by way of appeal within that department; and that, as to the facts on which their decision is based, in the absence of fraud or mistake, that decision is conclusive even in courts of justice, when the title afterwards comes in question. But that in this class of cases, as in all others, there exists in the courts of equity the jurisdiction to correct mistakes, to relieve against frauds and impositions, and in cases where it is clear that these officers have, by a mistake of the law, given to one man the land which, on the undisputed facts, belonged to another, to give appropriate relief."
Moore v. Robbins, 96 U. S. 530, 96 U. S. 535; Shepley v. Cowan, supra; Johnson v. Towsley, supra.
The language of this Court in Moore v. Robbins, cited above, is that equity will interfere "when it is clear that these officers have, by a mistake of the law, given to one man the land which, on the undisputed facts, belonged to another."
prejudice of plaintiff. But no such allegation is made in the complaint.
"But the said register and receiver refused to receive said money and issue a certificate of purchase for said land, as they had previously refused to award the same to him, and had returned the proofs with their said opinion to the General Land Office at Washington."
"The plaintiff's claim, among others, was thus rejected. But the Commissioner of the General Land Office took a different view of the law, and in certain cases, adjudicated by him, declared that the said lands were subject to preemption under the general laws, and sustained the rights of preemption settlers."
section, although the plaintiff first reduced it to possession, and has resided continuously upon and been in the occupation of it for the last fourteen years, and justly claimed by the plaintiff under the laws of the United States."
No copy of the opinion of the Attorney General or of the Secretary of the Interior is given, nor is there any other statement than this of what principle of law was then decided. That the decision had any reference whatever to the nature, character, or extent of the possession of the claimants under Vallejo, is a very forced inference from facts not found in the record, for the bill contains no allegation whatever of the proofs of the defendants, or of what they did or did not prove in regard to possession, except that they had not resided on the land.
of the two courts of California on that ground, demands some stronger evidence that such a decision was made by these officers than is to be found in this petition.
The next is that before the passage of that act the Commissioner of the General Land Office, at the instigation of defendants, fraudulently and unjustly ordered that the surveys of this land should be withheld by the surveyor general. Unless the mere use of the word fraudulent makes his order a fraud, it is impossible to see any wrong in withholding these surveys while Congress was considering how far and in what manner it would relieve Vallejo and his grantees from the effect of a very hard, if technically legal, judgment in favor of the government.
"defendants will, on receiving the patent, be at liberty to sell said land to innocent purchasers, and thus wholly defeat the just claim and right of plaintiff, who will thus be fraudulently deprived of the land which he has settled and improved under the guarantee of the laws of the land, and which is evidently the intent and purpose of said defendants in prosecuting their unjust and fraudulent claim to the land aforesaid."
general. United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U. S. 61; Kerr on Fraud, 365.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.