Court Opinion

ID: 9456088
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:41:38.046651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:50.624197
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur in the result reached by my Brothers, and I too, am favorably impressed by District Judge Smith’s discussion of the problems and the care with which he resolved them. As to the Mark location, however, I entertain some doubt about the significance attached to Mark’s so-called relinquishment of his claim. The appellants urged that Mark executed the relinquishing document because of fraudulent misrepresentations made to him by a representative of the Secretary, and the Secretary’s final decision recognizes, “It is true that a relinquishment must be voluntary and intentionally executed, and that a relinquishment that is secured through misrepresentation, fraud or deceit is void.” Insofar as I can ascertain, there is nothing in the record which adequately rebuts the declaration of Mark himself that “I would not have signed the relinquishment paper to the claim if I had known the truth and if I was not under the duress and threat I was violating the law.”
I therefore do not place such great reliance, as my Brothers and the District Court have done, upon the so-called relinquishment. Mark filed his certificate of location on September 26, 1961, and it should, I think, be reemphasized that his wife was not a co-locator. The land was withdrawn, by the Secretary’s Classification Order No. 503, on September 29, 1961. The record as a whole makes it quite clear that Mark had discovered no valuable mineral deposits on his claim before the issuance of the Classification Order and that he had made no recognizable investment toward that purpose. This being true, he .could have acquired no such vested rights as might have been impermissibly infringed by the order which issued three days after his claim was located. See Cameron v. United States, 252 U.S. 450, 456, 40 S.Ct. 410, 64 L.Ed. 659 (1920). It is this simpler approach which is more appealing to me.