Court Opinion

ID: 9299247
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:05:50.448962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:13:36.673668
License: Public Domain

FIELD, Circuit Justice.
If the facts stated' in the opinion of Commissioner Drummond annexed to the patent of 1870 cannot be considered as facts in evidence, there is nothing before the court impairing the validity of that patent. The indorsements on the copy produced show a revocation by the secretary of the cancellation directed by the commissioner; and if titles can be affected in this irregular way, can be divested and reinvested by indorsements of the officers of the land office upon its records, the revocation is of equal validity with the cancellation. The case, as thus presented, would be that of two-patents to the same parties, the second covering a larger tract than the first, with the admission of counsel that the second was issued upon allegations by the owner of error in the survey of the premises covered by the first, and of its insufficient publication under the-act of 1860. Without other knowledge on the subject we could not say that the second patent was invalid. Cases may often occur where a second patent would be necessary to prevent gross wrong to the patentee. If, for instance, a confirmation and a survey embraced three distinct tracts, and by mistake the survey returned and the patent issued covered only two of them, we do not see why, upon a proper presentation of the fact, and application of the claimant, the commissioner might not issue a second patent, either for the omitted tract or one embracing the three tracts together. The administration of the land department would be very defective if a mistake of this kind could not be remedied upon the consenfof the parties before the acceptance of the patent had rendered the proceeding a closed transaction.
*379If, then, any consideration is to be given to the argument of counsel, that the second patent in the case was properly cancelled because the first patent was conclusive of the rights of the parties, the facts stated in that opinion must be treated as in evidence; they were apparently so regarded by counsel on the argument, and for the present we shall so treat them.
We are therefore required for the disposition of the case to consider the validity of the action of the two commissioners of the general land office; — that of Wilson in cancelling the patent of 1S66 and issuing the one of 1870; and that of Drummond in annulling the action of Wilson and directing cancellation of the patent of 1870.
Previous to the act of June 14, 1860, the commissioner of the general land office exercised a general supervision and control of all executive duties relating to private claims to land and the issuing of patents therefor. Such authority was vested in him by the act of July 4, 1836, reorganizing the general land office. It necessarily embraced the examination of all surveys of such private claims.and their correction until made conformable with the right conferred upon the claimant by legislative act or judicial decree. The surveys of private land claims under Mexican grants in California, were thus subject to his control. He was invested with this necessary power to prevent the consequences to individuals, as well as to the public, of accident, inadvertence, irregularity or fraud. Castro v. Hendricks, 23 How. [64 U. S. ] 443. His duty in these cases was to compel conformity in the survey made with the decree of confirmation, where that contained a description of the land sufficiently specific to guide the surveyor, but if it contained no such description, then to compel a survey in a compact form, so far as such compactness was consistent with the natural features of .the country, and the previous selection of the confirmee as shown by his residence, cultivation and sales. This authority of the commissioner continues under the act of 1864. But by the act of 1860, and so long as that act was in force, his power in this respect was withdrawn.
That act established a system by which all surveys, when made pursuant to its requirements, and advertised in a certain way, became so far final as to leave to the commissioner the simple ministerial duty of issuing a patent thereon. It provided that the surveyor-general, when he had caused, in compliance with the thirteenth section of the act of 1851, a private land claim to be surveyed, and a plat thereof to be made, should give notice that the same had been done, and that the plat and survey were approved by him, by publication once a week for four weeks in two newspapers, one of which was to be in a paper “where the place of publication was nearest to the land,” and the other in a paper published in San Francisco, if the land was situated in the Northern district of California, and in Los Angeles, if situated in the Southern district. The act also provided that, until the expiration of the publication, the survey and plat should be retained in the surveyor-general’s office .subject to inspection; that upon the application of any party whom the district court or a judge thereof, should deem to have such an interest in the survey and location of a land claim, as to make it just and proper that he should be allowed to intervene for its protection, or on motion of the United States the district court should order the survey and plat to be returned into court for examination and adjudication; that when thus returned notice should be given by public advertisement, or in some other form prescribed by rule, to all parties interested, that objection had been made to the survey and location and admonishing them to intervene for the protection of their interests; that such parties having intervened might take testimony and contest the survey and location, and that on hearing the allegations and proofs, the court should render its judgment approving the survey, if found to be accurate, or correcting or modifying it, or annulling it and ordering a new survey, if found to be erroneous, and generally to exercise control over the survey until it was made to conform to the decree of confirmation.
And the act then declared that when after publication, as thus required, no application was made for an order to return the survey into court, or the application was refused, or if granted the court had approved the survey and location, or reformed or modified it and determined the true location of the claim, it should be the duty of the surveyor-general to transmit, without delay, the plat or survey of the claim to the general land office; and that the patent for the land, as surveyed, should forthwith be issued therefor; and that “the plat and survey so finally determined by publication, order or decree,” as the same might be, should “have the same effect and validity in law, as if a patent for said land so surveyed had been issued by the United States.” It is plain, from this language, that it was the intention of congress to withdraw from the commissioner the supervision and control of surveys subsequently made of private land claims under Mexican grants in California.
But there was still a duty resting upon that officer. To render the survey final, when not subjected to the judgment of the district court (which acquired jurisdiction by a return to it of the survey), it was necessary under the act, as already seen, that the publication required should be made. This was an essential prerequisite to its finality; nothing else could be substituted for it. And though in issuing a patent upon a survey when final, the commissioner had a mere ministerial duty to perform, there was this preliminary duty cast upon him to see that the necessary publication had been made. The certificate of the surveyor-general was evidence of this fact, but it was only prima facie evidence; un*380questioned, it might be taken as conclusive; when questioned, the commissioner could go behind it. The documents presented to him disclosed the fact that no publication of notice of the Terrell survey had been made in a paper published nearest the land. They allege that the Santa Barbara Gazette was, in January and February, 1861, published in the city of San Francisco, and not in the county of Santa Barbara, which is distant several hundred miles from that city. Of these documents one was an affidavit made by a person employed upon the Gazette, and the other by a subscriber to the paper. Both of them were made upon personal knowledge, and were positive in their character. And yet an affidavit of the widow of one of the publishers of the paper, made four years afterwards, that the Santa Barbara Gazette, though printed in San Francisco between January and October, 1861, was sent as soon as printed to Santa Barbara for distribution, was considered by Commissioner Drummond six years afterwards, sufficient to overthrow .these allegations. This distribution constituted, according to his judgment in reversing the action of his predecessor, the publication of the paper in that county within the meaning of the act of congress.
Assuming for. the present that Commissioner Drummond possessed at the time authority to annul the action of his predecessor, if deemed erroneous, we do not agree with him in his conclusion as to the sufficiency of the publication. It was not alleged in the affidavit of the widow, and it could not be presumed from the mere heading of the paper, admitted to be printed elsewhere, that the entire issue was sent to Santa Barbara, though intended principally for .circulation there. Certainly, a presumption of the kind was very slight ground upon which one public officer could undertake to set aside the deliberate act of his predecessor, had years before, upon which rights of property rested. The statute says that the notice must be published in a paper where the place of its publication is nearest the land, not where the place of its distribution is nearest. In one sense, a paper is published in every place where it is circulated, or its contents are made known. But it is not in that general sense that the language, “place of publication,” in the statute is used. That language refers to the particular place where the paper is first issued, that is, given to the public for circulation. Nearly all the great dailies published in the city of New York are distributed in different parts of the country. Large packages of these papers are daily made up and immediately transmitted to California, where the packages are opened and the papers distributed. A large number of them in this mode, no doubt, find their way to the county of Santa Barbara; yet it would do violence to our apprehension of the term to say that these papers are published in Santa Barbara, in the sense of .the statute. No one so understands the term in ordinary parlance, and it is not used in the statute in any technical sense.
But there is disclosed in the opinion of Commissioner Drummond, another fact, which makes it clear that no sufficient or legal publication was made, and that is, that the notice published omits the material statement required by the statute, that a survey and plat of the claim confirmed had been made and approved by the surveyor-general. All that is stated in the notice is that the surveyor-general had examined and approved of the Rancho Guadalupe, confirmed to Olivera and others, and that the plats would be retained in his office, subject to inspection, for four weeks from the date of the publication. A party might perhaps reasonably infer that reference was thus intended to some survey of the land, but he would not be obliged to take notice from the statement that the surveyor-general had caused a survey and plat to be made, or had approved of one made by others under his directions.
The commissioner appears to have given controlling weight, in overruling the action of his predecessor, to the certificates of Surveyors-General Mandeville and Beale, and of a clerk of the United States district court. The certificates were only prima facie evidence, and before the patent was issued, and afterwards, if the patent was properly recalled, the commissioner was at liberty to go behind them, and inquire whether notices had been in fact published, as there stated. The certificate of Surveyor-General Beale, as to the publication, was of matters not within his personal knowledge. And the same may be said of the certificate of the clerk, so far as the acts of the surveyor-general and his publications were concerned; as to them if was without any value whatever. The clerk can certify to copies of papers and orders in his office; also, perhaps, to the absence of papers and orders in particular cases, but that is the extent of his authority. His certificate would have been just as valuable as evidence had it related to the acts of the commissioner himself, and yet the commissioner twice refers to it as having some potentiality in the matter.
But aside from all considerations of this kind, the case cannot be disposed of by any judgment we may form of the evidence which controlled Commissioner Wilson. We have commented upon that evidence because, upon its supposed insufficiency, Commissioner Drummond justified his attempted annulment of the action of his predecessor and the cancellation of the second patent. If the patent of 1866 could be recalled at all, the sufficiency of that evidence is not a subject for consideration in this form of action, any more than the sufficiency of the evidence upon which any other step in the progress of the proceeding for a patent was taken. As we have already stated, it was the duty of the commissioner, upon receiving a survey transmitted to him as published, under the act of 1860, to *381examine into the regularity and sufficiency of the alleged publication. That was a matter submitted by the law to his determination; and that determination, whether correctly or erroneously made, was conclusive, unless reviewed and corrected on appeal by his superi- or, the secretary of the interior. The commissioner has undoubtedly a right within a reasonable period, upon proper application, to reconsider any matter previously determined by him, but such right must b' exercised before proceedings upon the original ruling have been taken and concluded. It would be a dangerous doctrine, creating great insecurity in titles, if the correctness of his action upon a matter over which he has jurisdiction could years afterwards be annulled by his successor, because of supposed errors of judgment, upon the sufficiency of evidence presented to him. And it would be without precedent and against principle for a court of law, in an action of ejectment upon a patent, to inquire collaterally into the sufficiency of such evidence to justify the action of the commissioner, and to submit that question to the determination of a jury. The patentee, if such a proceeding were permissible, would find his title established in one case and rejected in another, according to the varying judgment of different juries.
It becomes important, therefore, to determine when a patent of the United States for land takes effect, that is, when it becomes operative as a conveyance and binding upon both parties; and under what circumstances it may be recalled after it has passed under the seal of the United States, and been recorded. Some confusion has arisen in the consideration of this subject from not distinguishing between acts which bind the government, and acts which bind the patentee. It has been assumed, rather than stated, both in judicial decisions and in the argument of counsel, that when the government is bound, the patentee is bound also, without reference to his assent on the subject; but nothing is farther from the fact. No one can be compelled by the government, any more than by an individual, to become a purchaser, or even to take a gift. No one can have property, with its burdens or advantages, thrust upon him without his assent. In order, therefore, that the patent of the government, like the deed of a private person, may take effect as a conveyance, so as to bind the party to whom it is executed, and transfer the title to him, it is essential that it should be accepted. As the possession of property is universally, or nearly so, considered a benefit, the acceptance by the grantee of the conveyance transferring the title, where no personal obligation is imposed, whether the conveyance be a patent of the government or the deed of an individual, will always be presumed in the ábsence of express dissent, whenever the conveyance is placed in a condition for acceptance. There is in this respect no difference between the patent of the government and the deed of a private individual.
The question then, in all cases is, when is the conveyance in a condition for acceptance by the grantee? What act of the grantor is necessary to place the instrument in a condition for acceptance? When in that condition its operation is no longer subject to the control of the grantor; that then depends upon the grantee. The answer to the question is not difficult. If the instrument be the deed of a private individual it is in a condition for acceptance when it is offered for delivery, that is, when the grantor has parted with its possession or the right to retain it, in order that it may be given to the grantee. Jackson v. Dunlap, 1 Johns. Cas. 116; Jackson v. Phipps, 12 Johns. 418; Jackson v. Bodle, 20 Johns. 184; Church v. Gilman, 15 Wend. 656; Hulick v. Scovil, 4 Gilman, 159; Bullitt v. Taylor, 34 Miss. 741. If the instrument be the deed of the government, that is its patent, it is in that condition when the last formalities required by law of the officers of the government are complied with. Those formalities consist in passing the instrument under the seal of the United States, and in recording it in the records of the land office. By these acts, open and public declaration is made that so far as the general government is concerned, the title of the premises has been transferred to the grantee. The record stands in the place of the offer for delivery in the case of a private deed; the instrument is then in a condition for acceptance, and is thenceforth held for the grantee. And so the authorities are, that the grantee in such case takes by matter of record, the law deeming, as says Mr. Justice Story, speaking for the supreme court, “the grant of record of equal notoriety with an actual tradition of the land in view of the vicinage.” Green v. Liter, 8 Cranch [12 U. S.] 247.
In case of a private deed, it is essential that the grantor should part with its possession or the right to retain it, for until then he may alter or destroy it. But not so with the government deed; with the close of the record the power of the officers of the government over the instrument is gone. Whether it thereafter remain in the land office or be transmitted to a local officer for manual delivery to the patentee, its validity and operation are unaffected- Its acceptance by the grantee will then be conclusively presumed, unless immediately upon knowledge of its issue, his refusal to accept it is explicitly declared, and such refusal is communicated to the land office.
But assuming the correctness of this doctrine in cases of ordinary transfers by the government of property by sale or gift, it is argued by counsel that it has no application to patents issued upon a confirmation of Mexican grants in California. The argument is, that the government, in dealing with claims to land under these grants, acts *382as a sovereign over a subject within its exclusive jurisdiction; and, that in the discharge of its treaty óbligations, it has declared in what manner such claims shall be presented; by what officers their validity shall be tested and location determined, and by what document the result of the proceedings, when favorable to the claimant, shall be authenticated. The patent, it has declared, shall be issued by the commissioner when its tribunals have adjudged that the claim is valid, and its officers have correctly surveyed it. The claimant, saj' the counsel, cannot prevent the agents of the government from performing the duties which the law has imposed upon them. He is as powerless to prevent the issue of the patent as he was to annul the survey or control the decree. The law commands the commissioner to issue the patent, and with the discharge of that duty the confirmee cannot interfere. No act of the latter can enlarge or abridge the commissioner’s powers. And hence the efficacy of the patent in these cases does not depend upon the acceptance of the patentee.
The argument is plausible, but not sound; it proceeds upon the assumption that an acceptance of the patent must be by assent subsequent to its issue. But subsequent assent is not essential. A previous application for a patent is as persuasive evidence of its acceptance as any subsequent assent; that is, if the patent conforms to the application. Patents issued upon confirmation of Mexican grants in California are of this character. To obtain them is the object of the proceedings instituted under the act of 1851. The claimant asks in effect that his claim may be recognized and confirmed by an appropriate decree; that then a survey conforming to such decree may be made in the mode prescribed by law, and that a patent thereupon be issued to him. When a patent is thus issued it will take effect without reference to any subsequent action of the patentee. He has in advance, by his proceedings, signified his acceptance. But on the other hand, if the patent in such case be issued without a final survey, that is, one determined in the prescribed mode to be conformable to the decree, its acceptance cannot be conclusively presumed, from the fact that the patentee instituted the proceedings for the confirmation of his claim. He asked what the law authorized him to have, and so far as the law is disregarded in the survey he stands free as to his acceptance of the result. He can in such case, by prompt expression of dissent, communicated to the proper department, prevent the patent becoming so far binding upon him as to preclude a re-examination of the survey as to the errors alleged.
Such was the case with the patent of 1866; it was issued upon the supposition that the survey had become final by proper publication. The owner of the claim insisted that no such publication had been made, and that the survey was not therefore final and binding upon him, and was in fact erroneous, and on that ground refused at once to accept the patent, and asked for a new survey. The commissioner of the general land office was, upon this refusal and petition, at liberty to look again into the alleged finality of the survey, that is, into the sufficiency of the publication, for on no other ground than its insufficiency could he depart from the survey returned. The proceeding was one between the patentees and the government, and if the patentees, before accepting the patent, consented that the regular officer of the government might go behind the record and re-examine the matter which had been by law intrusted to him, and correct an error which had been committed, by accident, inadvertence, or otherwise, we do not perceive how any third party can object, and assail the second patent on that ground. If the defendants, or other third parties, have superior rights to those of the paten-tees, they are no more affected by the correction of the error in the survey than they would have been had the error never been committed. And if they have no such superior rights they cannot, upon any just principle of law or morals, contend that the error committed to the injury of the patentees or their successor in interest, shall be for ever irreversible. This is not a case where any doctrine of estoppel for alleged acts or conduct of the parties applies.
The proceeding is not in principle essentially different from the correction of a deed of a private person. If the deed is accepted when tendered, the transaction is closed; the title has passed, and any subsequent alteration of the instrument, or its destruction, cannot affect the grantee’s title. But if not accepted when tendered, the deed may be corrected by the grantor, until it meets the views of the grantee. The only difference between the two cases arises from the fact that whilst the individual grantor is not restricted in his alterations, the officers of the government, acting under the law, can only, even by consent of the patentee, go behind the record to correct an error committed to his injury in disregard of rights secured to him by the law. The Terrell survey not having become final, and the commissioner being satisfied that it was erroneous, a new survey was properly ordered, under the act of 1864, which was then alone applicable. It is conceded that the subsequent proceedings, including the issue of the patent of 1870, were in accordance with its provisions. Our conclusion is, that the patent of 1866 was lawfully recalled, and that the patent of 1870 was properly issued, and is a valid instrument, binding both upon the government and the patentees and their successor in interest. After' it was recorded, the officers of the government were powerless to change it or cancel it, without the *383■consent of its owner. It was then his muniment of title, and he was entitled to its possession whenever demanded.
The grant, upon which the patent held by -the defendants is founded, was of a rancho known as “La Punta de la Laguna,” adjoining the Rancho Guadalupe. It was presented to the board of land commissioners in 1S52, was confirmed by that tribunal in 1854, and by the decree of the district court of the United States in 1857. This decree, like that in the Guadalupe case, became final by stipulation of the attorney-general, abandoning an appeal taken from it to the supreme court of the United States. In September, 1860, the claim confirmed was surveyed, under instructions of the surveyor-.general for California, by the same deputy who surveyed the Guadalupe rancho, and the survey and plat were approved, as in that ■case, on the twenty-ninth of January, 1861, and a similar certificate of publication of notices of the survey and plat, in the same papers, and for the same period, was filed by the surveyor-general, on the thirty-first -of May, 1861. From some unexplained cause, the survey and plat do not appear to have been forwarded to the general land office, for a patent, until 1873, for the certificate of the original by the surveyor-general, incorporated into the patent, is dated in July of that year. The patent, as already ■stated, was issued in October, 1873. Whatever defect existed in the publication of notices of the survey and plat, in the Santa Barbara Gazette, in the Guadalupe case, existed in this case. No objection, however, appears to have been taken before the general land office on that ground, and objections to the survey of that character were ■obviated by the acceptance of the patent. The demanded premises are covered by this patent. We have, then, the case of two patents regularly issued, each embracing the land in controversy. We must, therefore, look behind them, to the original grants, to •ascertain which of them carried the better ■right to the premises. As already said, they adjoin each other; the eastern line of one is the western line of the other. If we can find this line, the difficulty is, of course, solved. The grant of the Guadalupe rancho •only designates generally the location of the land, without giving any specific boundaries, but in April, 1840, which was the month following its issue, possession was ■officially delivered to the grantee by the magistrate of the vicinage, a proceeding necessary, under the law of Mexico, to a complete investiture of title, and called, in the language of the country, juridical possession. This proceeding involved a measurement of the land, and its segregation from the public domain. A record of the proceeding, showing the measurement and the boundaries established, was made, and a copy is produced in evidence.
The grant of the Rancho La Punta de la Laguna describes the land granted as bounded by various designated ranchos. In January, 1845, juridical possession of these premises was also given to the grantees by a magistrate of the vicinage. A record of this proceeding was also preserved, and a copy is in evidence. These records were before the land commission, and the United States district court when the grants were confirmed, and in the decrees of confirmation the boundaries there given are followed.
If, now, we look at the decree in the case of the Rancho of La Punta de la Laguna, we find the dividing line between it and the Rancho Guadalupe thus described: “Commencing on the top of the Lomas de la Larga, and running northerly over the plain, crossing the middle of the laguna, the distance of ten thousand two hundred varas to the Cuchillo de Nipomi, where two roads ascend, and where a stake was driven as a boundary.” The different objects here stated have all been identified. The position of the top of the Lomas de la Larga is admitted to be at a live oak marked on the survey; the laguna, of course, lies where it always did; and the point where the stake mentioned was driven has been shown. The line thus given is the one laid down in the new survey of the Guadalupe rancho upon which the patent of 1870 was issued. We are satisfied that it is the true line. It would serve no useful purpose to go minutely into an examination of the evidence presented against this view. It is sufficient to observe that it has not created any serious doubt in our minds as to the correctness of this line. This conclusion disposes of the question of conflict of boundaries.
It is admitted that the defendants, except such as disclaimed, were in the possession of the premises in controversy at the commencement of the action; but there is no evidence of their possession at any previous period. There is, therefore, no basis laid for the recovery of any other than mere nominal damages for the alleged previous possession; and none, accordingly, will be awarded.
The plaintiff must have judgment for the possession of that portion of the demanded premises which is covered by the patent of 1870, with one dollar damages. Counsel for the plaintiff will, within ten days, prepare special findings in the ease, and submit them to the court for settlement, upon notice to the counsel of the defendants; otherwise, a general finding will be filed.
[For another case by the same plaintiff in the same court, decided by Circuit Judge Sawyer, in which he sustains the patent of March 1, 1S70. against defendants claiming under preemption, see Case No. 8,268.]