Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/81/442/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 05:44:34+00:00

Document:
1. By the settled land laws of Pennsylvania, no title can exist under a second survey unless such second survey have been ordered by the board of property.
2. The mere fact that a second survey was made is not evidence, even after a long time, as against another confessedly first, that an order for the second was made by the board of property and that the order has been lost. And although the loss of such an order may be presumed after a lapse of time, yet the presumption can be made only where the order is shown by some kind of competent proof to have once existed.
3. Where a charge is merely ambiguous, a party dissatisfied with it ought, before the jury leave the bar, to ask the court to make it clear. He should not acquiesce in the correctness of the instruction, take his chance with a jury, and after the verdict is against him, claim the benefit of the ambiguity on error.
In error to the Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in which court Munson and others brought ejectment against The Schuylkill and Dauphin Improvement Company and two other like companies, all corporations of Pennsylvania, to recover certain valuable lands in the state just named. Judgment having gone for the plaintiffs, the companies brought the case here.
Rules of decision in the courts of the United States, as well as the forms and modes of process, are very largely derived from the laws of the states as construed by the decisions of the state courts, in cases where they apply, except where the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States otherwise require or provide.
plaintiffs, on the sixth of February, 1866, brought an action of ejectment against the three corporation defendants and the other defendants therein named to recover the possession of the tract, alleging that the title to the tract and the right of possession were in them and not in the defendants. Service was duly made and the defendants appeared and pleaded that they were not guilty as alleged in the declaration. Issue was joined upon that plea and the parties went to trial, and the verdict and judgment were for the plaintiffs. Exceptions were duly taken by the defendants, and they sued out a writ of error and removed the cause into this Court.
(1) An application to the land office of the state dated December 14, 1829, made by him for sixty-six acres of unimproved land in Lower Mahantongo Township, Schuylkill County, bounded as therein described.
(2) Warrant from the state of the same date to the applicant for the land described in the application, as fully set forth in the record.
(3) Return of survey made by a deputy surveyor of the county, June 1, 1829, in pursuance of the warrant, as duly returned to the land office and accepted the fifth of March of the succeeding year, as follows, to-wit: situate in Lower Mahantongo Township, Schuylkill County, containing sixty-six acres and one hundred and three perches, and allowance of six percent, returned this third day of March, 1830, in pursuance of a warrant dated the 14th of December, 1829, to Benjamin Bonawitz. Superadded to the return is the following statement, that the lines and corners of the survey were made on the eighteenth of June, 1829, in pursuance of a warrant dated the seventeenth of March of that year, granted to the same person, a return on which was made, but was rejected on account of the survey not answering the description of the warrant.
grantees of the land described in the warrant, to the plaintiffs.
Appended to the statement that those conveyances were introduced is the admission of the counsel for the defendants that Schuylkill County was erected out of Berks County, and that Porter Township, where the premises are situated, as alleged in the declaration, was created out of Lower Mahantongo Township, which is the name of the township where the location was made under the warrant, survey, and return.
(1) An application, dated July 1, 1793, made by Jacob Yeager to the land office for four hundred acres of and adjoining land granted the same day to William Witman, Jr., in the County of Berks.
(2) Warrant from the state, dated July 1, 1793, to Jacob Yeager for the same land, as more fully set forth in the bill of exceptions.
(3) Return of survey on the warrant by the Deputy Surveyor of Berks County, on the tenth of July, 1794, of four hundred and forty acres and sixty-four perches of land and allowance, situate in Pinegrove Township, in the County of Berks, returned and accepted August 26, 1794, as therein certified.
(4) Sundry conveyances were also offered in evidence by the defendants, tending, as they contend, to deduce title to the said corporations, or one of them, to the land located and surveyed under the warrant to Jacob Yeager, which includes the land embraced in the warrant and survey under which the plaintiffs deraign their title.
(1) Certified copies of eighteen applications, dated July 1, 1793, to the land office, for four hundred acres each, the leading one being in the name of James Silliman, and one of the number being the application by Jacob Yeager given in evidence by the defendants, as follows: Jacob Yeager applies for four hundred acres of land adjoining land this day granted to William Witman, Jr., in the County of Berks.
upon those applications, including the warrant given to Jacob Yeager, introduced in evidence by the other party.
(3) Also certified copies of eighteen surveys, including the Jacob Yeager tract, made by a deputy surveyor of Berks County, upon those warrants, corresponding with the descriptions set forth in the warrants, the certificate of the survey in question being fully set forth in the bill of exceptions.
(4) Return and acceptance of those eighteen surveys, made by Henry Vanderslice, July 16, 1793, as appears in the list annexed to the return. They also introduced a certified copy of a caveat, entered July 18, 1793, by John Kunckle and Aaron Bowen against granting the tracts either to the said Jacob Yeager or to anyone of the other seventeen applicants under the warrants included in that list.
(5) Certificate from the office of the surveyor general that no proceedings had ever been had upon the said caveat.
By that certificate, it appears that diligent and careful search had been made in that department for proceedings on that caveat, and the proper officer certifies that he does not find that any citation was ever applied for or that any proceedings or action was ever had by the board of property upon or concerning the same, which remains recorded in the office of the surveyor general.
(6) They also offered in evidence a map, showing the two locations of the Jacob Yeager tract, the first by Henry Vanderslice and the second by William Wheeler, both deputy surveyors of Berks County.
(7) Both sides admitted that Henry Vanderslice was a deputy surveyor of Berks County, and that the location of the Jacob Yeager tract as made by him was made in the County of Northumberland, within one mile of the line between that county and Berks County, and that the second location of the warrant by William Wheeler was made in Berks County about twenty-two miles distant from the survey made by the other deputy surveyor.
eighteen warrants returned and accepted, August 26 of that year, together with a connected chart of the four tracts, as prepared from the original surveys on file in the office of the surveyor general.
Neither party desiring to offer any further evidence, the presiding justice proceeded to charge the jury. Speaking of the warrant and survey introduced by the plaintiffs, he told the jury that the court saw no defect in the plaintiffs' title under that warrant and survey, adding that the only claim which the defendants have set up is under warrants located several miles from the land in controversy by surveys returned and accepted, and to that instruction no exception was taken by the defendants. But the court also told the jury that "no subsequent official survey of the land under those warrants, without a warrant of survey or order of the board of property, was authorized." Therefore, said the justice, if the jury take the same view of the evidence as the court, the verdict should be for the plaintiffs, and the jury followed that instruction, and the defendants excepted.
(1) That the court erred in charging the jury that no subsequent official survey of the land under those warrants, without a warrant of survey or order of the board of property, was authorized.
(2) That the court erred in telling the jury that if they took the same view of the evidence as the court, the verdict should be for the plaintiffs, as the effect of the instruction, as the defendants contend, was to withdraw from the jury the consideration of the question whether or not the board of property might not have issued an order for a second survey of the tract, the evidence of which had been lost.
Much discussion of the first error assigned is unnecessary, as the defendants admit that the law is well settled in that state that a warrant, where it appears that a survey has been ordered upon it and made, returned, and accepted, is functus officio, and that no title under a second survey can be made unless such second survey was ordered by the board of property, which it is admitted is not directly proved in this case.
2. Whether the circuit court erred, as alleged in the second assignment of errors, depends upon the disputed fact whether there was any evidence in the case which would have warranted the jury in finding that an order for a second survey was ever granted by the board of property, as it is settled law that it is error to submit a question to a jury in a case where there is no evidence upon the subject.
the settled rule is if the charge is merely ambiguous the party dissatisfied with it should have requested to have it made clear before the jury left the bar; that a party under such circumstances may not acquiesce in the correctness of the instruction by his silence and take his chance with the jury, and them be allowed, if the verdict is against him, to claim the benefit of the ambiguity without having invited attention to the subject and given the court an opportunity to have made the correction to the jury. Much weight is certainly due to the suggestions of the plaintiffs, that the judge did not withdraw the evidence from the jury, if any there was in the case, that the language only warrants the conclusion that he expressed his own opinion, as he had a right to do, if he thought it proper, and left the question to the determination of the jury. Assume that to be the true construction of the language employed, and it is quite clear that the exception cannot be sustained, but the court is not inclined to place the decision upon that ground, as it is even clearer that there was no evidence in the case which would have warranted the jury in finding that an order for a new survey was ever granted by the board of property, as required by law and the repeated decisions of the supreme court of the state.
nor the payment of any taxes assessed upon the land. On the contrary, they proved nothing except the mere lapse of time, unaccompanied by evidence of possession, or of improvements, or the payment of taxes, or any other circumstance, as a ground of presumption to warrant the jury in finding that the board of property ever granted a new warrant of survey or made any order of a character to give legality to the title set up in their behalf, which is all that need be remarked to show that there is no error in the record. Unquestionably lost records may be proved by secondary evidence, but their former existence and loss must first be established by competent proof, and it is clear that evidence merely showing that they do not exist is not sufficient to establish either of those requirements.
MR. JUSTICE STRONG having been of counsel for one of the parties did not sit.
3 Sergeant & Rawle 346.
Purdon's Digest, 9th ed., 619, pls. 7 and 8.
Drinker v. Holliday, 2 Yeates 89; Porter v. Ferguson, 3 id. 60; Vickroy v. Skelley, 14 Sergeant & Rawle 377; Oyster v. Bellas, 2 Watts 397; Bellas v. Cleaver, 4 Wright 260; Gratz v. Beates, 9 Wright 495.
61 U. S. 20 How. 254.
Goodman v. Simonds, 20 How. 359; Dubois v. Lord, 5 Watts 49; Haines v. Stouffer, 10 Barr, 363.
Ryder v. Wombwell, Law Reports 4 Exchequer 39; Law Reports 2 Privy Council Appeals 335.
Jewell v. Parr, 13 C.B. 916; Toomey v. L. & B. Railway Co., 3 C.B.N.S. 150; Wheelton v. Hardisty, 8 Ellis & Blackburn 266; Schuchardt v. Allens, 1 Wall. 369.
1 Greenleaf on Evidence, 2d ed., § 558.
1 Greenleaf on Evidence, 12th ed., § 20; Hathaway v. Clark, 5 Pickering 490; Brunswick v. McKean, 4 Greenleaf 508.
Purdon's Digest, 9th ed., pl. 65.
Mock v. Astley, 13 Sergeant & Rawle 382; Caul v. Spring, 2 Watts 390; Norris v. Hamilton, 7 Watts 91; Nieman v. Ward, 1 Watts & Sergeant 68; Ormsby v. Ihmsen, 10 Casey 462.
Deal v. McCormick, 3 Sergeant & Rawle 346; Oyster v. Bellas, 2 Watts 897; Cassiday v. Conway, 1 Casey, 240; Hughes v. Stevens, 7 Wright 197.
9 Sergeant & Rawle 39.

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