Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/207/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 19:48:42+00:00

Document:
In this case, application was made by the defendants below, after judgment, to the Supreme Court of Texas for a writ of error to the Court of Civil Appeals for the Second District for the purpose of reviewing the judgment of that court, and the application was denied. Held that this Court has jurisdiction to reexamine the judgment on writ of error to the court of civil appeals.
In case of a change of phraseology in an article in a state constitution, it is for the state courts to determine whether the change calls for a change of construction.
Where there are two grounds for the judgment of a state court, one only of which involves a federal question, and the other is broad enough to maintain a judgment sought to be reviewed, this Court will not look into the federal question.
When a state court has based its decision on a local or state question, and this Court in consequence finds it unnecessary to decide a federal question raised by the record, the logical course is to dismiss the writ of error.
The State of Texas commenced this action against the defendants, Bacon, Graves, and Gibbs, in the District Court of the County of Mitchell, in the State of Texas, for the purpose of recovering the possession of a large amount of land -- nearly 300,000 acres -- which it was alleged the defendants had unlawfully entered upon and dispossessed plaintiff from, and the possession of which they continued to withhold from plaintiff, the plaintiff being the owner in fee simple of such land at the time when the defendants dispossessed the state therefrom. Plaintiff also sought to recover damages for the use and occupation of such lands, and judgment was demanded for the possession of the land and for damages and for costs of the suit, and for general relief.
which the sales were made was, under Article II, Section 10, subd. 1, of the Constitution of the United States, null and void as affecting defendants' vested rights. They prayed for judgment that the plaintiff take nothing by its suit and that the defendants have and recover from and of the plaintiff the lands as herein claimed by them, and for further relief.
The state filed its reply to the defendants' answer, and after specially excepting to certain of the allegations of the answer as insufficient, it alleged that the defendants were not entitled or authorized to purchase the lands, and had not complied with the law in reference thereto in any particular, and that if the defendants had tendered the treasurer of the state the money for the lands as alleged, the treasurer properly refused and declined to receive the same for that the defendants had not purchased the same from the plaintiff by complying fully with any existing law authorizing the purchase or sale thereof, and that if the defendants or any of them ever paid to the treasurer, in January, 1891, the sum of money in said answered stated, the treasurer was not authorized by law to receive it, and this defendants well knew, and that the payment was made after full and explicit notice to defendants that plaintiff repudiated and would vigorously contest the claim of the defendants to said lands, and the defendants paid the same at their peril. The court overruled the defendants' exceptions to the plaintiff's petition, and the case came on for trial.
The questions sought to be raised herein by the plaintiffs in error are stated by them to arise under the acts of the State of Texas above mentioned, the one known as chapter 52 of the laws of 1879, and entitled "An act to provide for the sale of a portion of the unappropriated public lands of the State of Texas and the investment of the proceeds of such sale," which act was approved July 14, 1879, and the other known as chapter 3 of the laws of the same state, passed in 1883, and entitled "An act to withdraw the public lands of the State of Texas from sale," approved January 22, 1883. The act of 1881, amending that of 1879, is immaterial to the questions herein arising.
Section 1 of the act of 1879 provides for the sale of all the vacant and unappropriated land of the State of Texas in certain named counties thereof. Section 2 provided that any person, firm, or corporation desiring to purchase any of the unappropriated lands therein set apart and reserved for sale might do so by causing the tract or tracts which such person, firm, or corporation desired to purchase to be surveyed by the authorized public surveyor of the county or district in which said land was situated. By section 3, it was made the duty of the surveyor, to whom application was made by responsible parties, to survey the lands designated in the application within three months from the date thereof, and within sixty days after said survey to certify to, record, and map the field notes of said survey, and within said sixty days to return to and file the same in the General Land Office, as required by law in other cases. Section 5 provided that within sixty days after the return to and filing in the General Land Office of the surveyor's certificate, map, and field notes of the land desired to be purchased, it should be the right of the person, firm, or corporation who had had the same surveyed to pay or cause to be paid into the Treasury of the state the purchase money therefor at the rate of fifty cents per acre, and, upon the presentation to the Commissioner of the General Land Office of the receipt of the state treasurer for such purchase money, the commissioner was bound to issue to said person, firm, or corporation a patent for the tract or tracts of land so surveyed and paid for.
"that all the public lands heretofore authorized to be sold under an act entitled 'An act to provide for the sale of the unappropriated public lands of the State of Texas and the investment of the proceeds of such sale,' approved July 14, 1879, be, and the same are hereby, withdrawn from sale."
care shall be taken to determine its variations from the pole in the district where the surveys are made. Each survey shall be made with great caution, with metallic chains made for the purpose, and care shall be taken that the place of beginning of the survey of each parcel of land be established with certainty, taking the bearing and distance of two permanent objects at least."
"The field notes of each survey shall state (1) the county or land district in which the land is situated; (2) the certificate or other authority under or by virtue of which it is made, giving a true description of same by numbers, date where and when issued, name of original grantee and quantity; (3) the land by proper field notes, with the necessary calls and connection for identification (observing the Spanish measurement for varas); (4) a diagram of the survey; (5) the variation at which the running was made; (6) it shall show the names of the chain carriers; (7) it shall be dated and signed by the surveyor; (8) the correctness of the survey and that it was made according to law shall be certified to officially by the surveyor who made the same, and also that such survey was actually made in the field, and that the field notes have been duly recorded, giving book and page; (9) when the survey has been made by a deputy, the county or district surveyor shall certify officially that he has examined the field notes, has found them correct, and that they are duly recorded, giving the book and page of the record."
records of the land office, the lands in question appeared to have been surveyed at different times, and the field notes recorded in the surveyor's office in some instances, but not in all. The surveyor of the Palo Pinto land district certified to the respective surveys on the dates the surveys purport to have been made. None of the land included in this suit has ever been patented by the state under the Bacon and Graves purchase, and on the 26th of May, 1890, Bacon and Graves transferred, by deed of special warranty, 579 sections of land to C.C. Gibbs, who holds the same in trust for E. M. Bacon, E. G. Graves, and others.
"that none of the land in suit was actually surveyed upon the ground by the deputy surveyor who purported to have done so, but they merely copied in the office of the surveyor of the Palo Pinto land district the field notes of the Elgin survey."
"adopted by the surveyor of the Palo Pinto land district, and his deputies, in making out the field notes of the land applied to be purchased by Bacon and Graves."
were deputies under Joel McKee from December, 1882, to March, 1883, and McKee was the surveyor of the Palo Pinto district, in which the land in question lay.
On May 16, 1883, the defendants tendered to the treasurer of the state $80,640, and on May 19, 1883, they tendered him the further sum of $104,640, in payment for these lands. These tenders were refused. In January, 1891, Bacon and Graves paid the treasurer $149,320 for said lands, which was received by him "under protest."
The court, as conclusions of law, found (1) that Bacon and Graves were not responsible parties within the meaning of the statute at the time they applied to purchase this land, and could not purchase under the law; (2) that they did not comply with the law by having the lands surveyed as was required be law, and therefore could not purchase it; (3) the survey, as adopted, was not made in accordance with law, is incorrect (totally so), in having a greater frontage on permanent water than is permitted under the acts of 1879 and 1881; (4) Bacon and Graves have never paid or offered to pay for said land until long after the expiration of the time allowed and required by law. The purported surveys of many of the sections of land for which they tendered payment on May 19, 1883, were made after the fifty-cent act was repealed, and Bacon and Graves did not separate or offer to separate in their tender the surveys made before the repeal from those made after, and there was consequently no legal tender; (5) at the time Graves entered into an agreement with Bacon to purchase these lands, he was an employee of the General Land Office, and his action was against the civil and criminal laws of the state; (6) that the state was not bound to return the money paid in January, 1891, to entitle it to judgment for the land.
were not responsible parties, and so could not purchase any land.
"by the word 'protest,' as used in the finding, is meant that the treasurer of the state had several times refused to accept this money, and at the time he received it, in January, 1891, the parties paying fully understood that the state would contest their claim to the land, and the treasurer did not receive the money as a legal payment therefor."
After argument, the court of civil appeals in all things affirmed the judgment of the court below. The appellants duly asked for a rehearing for reasons assigned by them in their amended motion therefor. The motion was denied, and judgment duly entered affirming in all things the judgment against the defendants for the recovery of the lands in question. The defendants then presented a petition to the Supreme Court of the State of Texas for the allowance of a writ of error, to enable that court to review the judgment of the court of civil appeals. The application for this writ of error was refused by the supreme court, and an order refusing it was sent to the clerk of the court of civil appeals, pursuant to a rule of the supreme court.
The assignments of errors by the defendants on their appeal to the court of civil appeals contain an assignment of error in that they had acquired a vested right to the lands, by the survey thereof as made for them, under the act of 1879, prior to the repeal of that act by the repealing act of 1883, and which right could not be affected by such repeal. The court of civil appeals held that there was no contract between the parties, because of the failure of the defendants to have such surveys made as were called for under the act of 1879.
obligation or validity of the contract for the purchase of said lands between the State of Texas and said appellants, arising under and created by said Acts of the legislature of Texas approved July 14, 1879, and March 11, 1881.
Revised Statutes of the United States; Gregory v. McVeigh, 23 Wall. 294; Fisher v. Perkins, 122 U. S. 522; Stanley v. Schwalby, 162 U. S. 255.
Assuming that the record is properly brought here by virtue of the writ of error granted by this Court, the question arises as to what, if any, jurisdiction we have to review the judgment of the state court. Our only right to review it depends upon whether there is a federal question in the record which has been decided against the plaintiffs in error. Rev.Stat. § 709.
Where the federal question upon which the jurisdiction of this Court is based grows out of an alleged impairment of the obligation of a contract, it is now definitely settled that the contract can only be impaired, within the meaning of this clause in the Constitution and so as to give this Court jurisdiction on writ of error to a state court, by some subsequent statute of the state which has been upheld, or effect given it, by the state court. Lehigh Water Co. v. Easton, 121 U. S. 388; New Orleans Waterworks Co. v. Louisiana Sugar Refining Co., 125 U. S. 18; Central Land Co. v. Laidley, 159 U. S. 103, 159 U. S. 109. As stated in the case reported in 125 U.S., supra, it is not necessary that the law of a state, in order to come within this constitutional prohibition, should be either in the form of a statute enacted by the legislature in the ordinary course of legislation or in the form of a constitution established by the people of the state as their fundamental law. A bylaw or ordinance of a municipal corporation may be such an exercise of legislative power delegated by the legislature to the corporation, as a political subdivision of the state, having all the force of law within the limits of the municipality, that it may properly be considered as a law within the meaning of this article of the Constitution of the United States.
If the judgment of the state court gives no effect to the subsequent law of the state, and the state court decides the case upon grounds independent of that law, a case is not made for review by this Court upon any ground of the impairment of a contract. The above-cited cases announce this principle.
"In arriving at this conclusion, however, the state court gave effect to the revenue law of 1891, and held that the contract did not confer the right of exemption from its operation. If it did, its obligation was impaired by the subsequent law, and as the inquiry whether it did or not was necessarily directly passed upon, we are of opinion that the writ of error was properly allowed."
So in Mobile & Ohio Railroad v. Tennessee, 153 U. S. 486. In that case, it was contended that this Court had no jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Supreme Court of Tennessee because the decision of that court proceeded upon the ground that there was no contract in existence, between the railroad company and the state, to be impaired, and that the supposed contract was in violation of the state constitution of 1834, and hence not within the power of the legislature to make. In truth, however, the court in its decree gave effect to the subsequent statute of Tennessee, which it was claimed impaired the obligation of the contract entered into between the state and the railroad company, and under those circumstances this Court exercised jurisdiction to review the decision of the state court on the question as to whether there was a contract or not, and as to the meaning of the contract, if there were one, and whether it had been impaired by the subsequent legislation to which effect had been given.
becomes necessary, therefore, in the examination of this case, to inquire whether the federal question has been raised in the courts of the state, and if so, whether the judgment of the state court is founded upon, or in any manner gives the slightest effect to, the subsequent act of 1883.
The statement of facts already given shows that the only allusion made to the act of 1883 in the pleadings was made by the defendants. No claim was made by the plaintiff, the State of Texas, by either of its pleadings of any right accruing to it by virtue or under the provisions of the last-named act. The trial court, in its findings, sets forth at length and in detail the various times in which the surveys were made, and the field notes filed, of the lands in question, and then states that none of the land in suit was actually surveyed upon the ground by the deputy surveyors who purported to have done so, but they merely copied in the office of the surveyor of the Palo Pinto land district the field notes of the Elgin survey. What that Elgin survey was is also set forth in the foregoing statement, and upon these facts the court found as a conclusion of law that the defendants did not comply with the law by having the land surveyed as was required by it, and therefore could not purchase such land. Assuming there was a federal question properly raised, we also find in the record a broad and comprehensive holding that the defendants never complied with the act of 1879, and never made the surveys necessary to be made under the law of Texas in order to vest them with any rights whatsoever under that act. This ground of judgment is founded upon a matter of state law, and makes no reference whatever to any subsequent act of the legislature, and in no way upholds that act or treats it as of the least force or virtue, any more than if the act had never been passed. If it never had been passed, and the defendants had made this same claim of having a contract for the purchase of the lands by reason of the things done under the act of 1879, and the court had decided upon their claim in the same way it has done in this case, it is beyond question that this Court would have no jurisdiction to review that decision of the state court, however erroneous it might be regarded by us.
The case is not altered by the fact that the state has passed an act which the defendants assert impairs the obligation of their contract, so long as the court, in deciding their case, holds that they never had a contract because they never had complied with the provisions of the original statute, and so long as it gives judgment wholly without reference to the subsequent act and without upholding or in any manner giving effect to any provision thereof.
Whether the statute of 1879 permitted a survey to be adopted from a survey which had previously been made in the field or whether it did not was a case of construction of a state statute by the state court. It is not one of those cases where this Court will construe the meaning of a state statute for itself. This Court, even on writ of error to a state court, will construe for itself the meaning of a statute as affecting an alleged contract where it is claimed that a subsequent statute passed by the state has impaired the obligations of the contract as claimed by the party and where such subsequent statute has, by the judgment of the state court, in some way been brought into play, and effect been given to some or all of its provisions. In such a case, this Court construes the contract in order to determine whether the later statute impairs its obligation. Louisville Gas Co. v. Citizens' Gas Co., 115 U. S. 683, 115 U. S. 697. This is not such a case. The later statute is not given effect to by the judgment of the court.
but that defendants obtained no vested rights in the land by virtue of such survey, and that the act of 1883 was effectual in withdrawing such lands from market, that decision would have been reviewable here, and in that case this Court would determine for itself what rights the parties obtained under the act of 1879, and whether, by what they had done, they had obtained any rights which could not be unfavorably affected by the act of 1883.
It is, however, urged that the Texas courts for many years had construed the acts passed by the state relating to surveys of its public lands as permitting what are termed "adoptive surveys" (i.e. surveys adopted from those which had once been made in the field), and that the act of 1879, in simply providing for surveys of lands for which applications to purchase might be made, left it to the general law, which provided the details and manner of carrying out such survey. The construction of the general law which had been thus given by the courts upon the question of what was a sufficient survey, it is claimed, had become a rule of property which parties were entitled to rely upon and which no court could overturn, and if it did so, a contract was impaired and the judgment was reviewable by this Court. The proposition cannot be maintained as a basis for giving this Court jurisdiction upon writ of error to the state court. It ignores the limit to our jurisdiction in this regard, which, as has been seen, is confined to legislation which impairs the obligation of a contract. 125 and 159 U.S., supra.
The argument involves the claim that jurisdiction exists in this Court to review a judgment of a state court on writ of error when such jurisdiction is based upon an alleged impairment of a contract by reason of the alteration by a state court of a construction theretofore given by it to such contract or to a particular statute or series of statutes in existence when the contract was entered into. Such a foundation for our jurisdiction does not exist.
certain bonds were void upon precisely the same facts that this Court in the Gelpcke case held were valid. There was no subsequent legislative act impairing their obligation, and hence this Court had no jurisdiction to review the judgment of the state court.
Considerable stress has been laid upon the case of Louisiana v. Pilsbury, 105 U. S. 278, as an authority for the proposition that this Court has jurisdiction even though the judgment of the state court gives no effect to the subsequent state legislation, and also for the proposition that the obligation of a contract may be impaired by a change in the construction given to it by the courts of a state, and that a federal question, under the contract impairment clause of the Constitution, is thus presented which may be reviewed in this Court. It is stated that the Supreme Court of Louisiana in that case confined its decision to the unconstitutionality of the act of 1852, under which the bonds were issued, and that its judgment proceeded wholly without reference to the subsequent acts of the legislature which were claimed to impair the obligations of the contract based upon the act of 1852, and it is argued that unless a federal question were presented, even where no effect was given to subsequent legislation or by the fact that the state court, in holding the act of 1852 unconstitutional, varied from its former decisions in that regard, and thereby impaired the obligation of a contract, this Court would have had no jurisdiction to hear and decide the case as it did. A portion of the opinion of one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Louisiana is quoted in which it is stated that they find it unnecessary to pass upon the subsequent statute which was alleged to have impaired the contract of 1852 because the views which had already been expressed, declaring the act of 1852, under which the bonds were issued, unconstitutional, were sufficient to dispose of the case. An examination of the record in that case shows neither proposition for which it is cited is therein decided.
law, and without reference to any statute which plaintiffs in error alleged impaired their contract. The decision of the motion was postponed to the argument upon the merits, and, upon that argument, counsel for plaintiffs in error, clearly recognizing the necessity they were under of showing that the state court did give effect to the subsequent legislation in order to show the existence of a federal question, claimed that it appeared in that record that no judgment could have been given for the defendant in error in the court below without necessarily giving effect to some of the subsequent legislation, and they claimed that an examination of the whole record would show such fact notwithstanding the statement contained in one of the opinions of the state court, already alluded to. They also alleged there was no question of state law passed on by the court below sufficiently broad to have sustained the decision without passing on this federal question. The argument in favor of the jurisdiction, as thus placed by the counsel for the plaintiffs in error, seems to have been sufficient to convince the Court; for in its opinion the question of jurisdiction is not adverted to in any way, and is assumed to exist. Of course, having jurisdiction to review the state court in regard to this federal question, it then became proper for this Court to determine for itself what was the contract, and whether it had been impaired by any subsequent legislation of the state. In determining what the contract was, the opinion cites many cases in the state court which had been decided regarding the Constitution of that State of 1845, which was in existence at the time the act of 1852 was passed, and it was stated that the exposition made by the courts of the state in regard to its Constitution or laws in existence at the time when the obligations were issued under them was to be treated as a part of the contract, and formed a basis for determining what that contract was.
thereof, nor that the obligation of a contract may be impaired within the contract clause of the federal Constitution unless there has been some subsequent act of the legislative branch of the government to which effect has been given by the judgment of the state court. The case may therefore be regarded as in entire harmony with the later cases on the subject mentioned in 125 U.S. and 159 U.S., supra. The opinion proceeds upon the assumption that effect had been given to this subsequent legislation, and it proves that such legislation impaired the contract as construed here.
"SEC.19. The surveyors shall make oath before the respective commissioners truly and faithfully to discharge the duties of their office."
"SEC. 20. The course of the lines shall be determined by the magnetic needle, and care shall be taken to determine its variations from the pole in the district where the surveys are made."
"SEC. 21. The surveys shall be made with great caution, with metallic chains made for the purpose, and care shall be taken that the place of beginning the survey of each parcel of land be established with certainty, taking the bearing and distance of two permanent objects at least."
"the correctness of the survey and that it was made according to law shall be certified to officially by the surveyor who made the same, and also that such survey was actually made in the field, and that the field notes have been duly recorded, giving the book and page."
"We think the principal object of the legislature in requiring such strictness in the certificate to be made by the surveyor was to correct the abuse to which the previous law had been subjected, as above indicated, and we think it must be conceded, if the legislature had the power to condemn what is commonly known as an 'office survey,' or 'office work,' and to require its officer, before parting with the public lands of the state, to have the survey actually done in the field, it has done so by the passage of this statute."
so that a judgment of the state court thereon may be reviewable here. The Court is under no obligation to put the same construction upon a later statute that it has placed upon an earlier one, though the language of the two may be similar. Wood v. Brady, 150 U. S. 18. But it is unnecessary to dwell upon this difference between the two statutes, because, under such circumstances as exist in this case, the decision of the state court regarding it is not reviewable here on a writ of error to that court.
"Bacon and Graves have never paid or offered to pay for said land until long after the expiration of the time allowed and required by law. The purported surveys of many of the sections of the land for which they tendered payment on May 19, 1883, were made after the fifty-cent act was repealed, and Bacon and Graves did not separate, or offer to separate, in their tender, the surveys made before the repeal from those made after, and there was consequently no legal tender."
surveyed as was required by law, and therefore could not purchase it" is distinct and separate ground for the judgment of the court to rest upon, to the same extent as if none other had been stated, and it is entirely sufficient, in itself, upon which to rest the judgment.
"Whether the state court so interpreted the territorial statute as to deny such writ to plaintiffs in error we need not inquire, for it proceeds in part upon another and distinct ground, not involving a federal question and sufficient in itself to maintain the judgment without reference to that question."
"That view does not involve a federal question. Whether sound or not we do not inquire. It is broad enough in itself to support the final judgment without reference to the federal question."
"that where a state court, in rendering judgment, decides a federal question and also decides against the plaintiff in error upon an independent ground not involving a federal question and broad enough to support the judgment, this Court will dismiss the writ of error without considering the federal question."
v. Stinchfield, 159 U. S. 658, 159 U. S. 660, and Seneca Nation of Indians v. Christy, 162 U. S. 283.
In such cases as this it has sometimes been the practice of this Court to affirm the judgment, and sometimes to dismiss the writ.
"An examination of our records will show that in some cases, this Court has affirmed the judgment of the court below, and sometimes has dismissed the writ of error. This discrepancy may have originated in a difference of views as to the precise scope of the questions presented. However that may be, we think that when we find it unnecessary to decide any federal question, and that when the state court has based its decision on a local or state question, our logical course is to dismiss the writ."
Eustis v. Bolles, supra. Accordingly, the judgment in the case last cited was one of dismissal. The same judgment was given in the two cases in 159 U.S., Rutland R. Co. v. Central Vermont R. Co. and Gillis v. Stinchfield, and also in the very latest case on the subject -- that of Seneca Nation v. Christy, 162 U. S. 283.

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