Court Opinion

ID: 9854416
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:07:23.750653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:04.533537
License: Public Domain

Hunter, J.
(dissenting)—I dissent. This state has long adhered to the old common law rule that an action for the purpose of determining title to real property must be brought at the situs of the real property involved. This court said in Olympia Mining & Milling Co. v. Kerns, 64 Wash. 545, 117 Pac. 260 (1911) at 550:
[I]t is settled, without conflict of authority, that the courts of one state or country have no authority to divest title to the real estate of an involuntary defendant, situated in a foreign state, or to entertain an action for trespass or ejectment, it being most aptly said in the books that such actions “touch the title” and are purely local in character.
The following authorities are in accord: Laslie v. Gragg Lbr. Co., 184 Ga. 794, 193 S.E. 763, 113 A.L.R. 932 (1937); Restatement of Conflict of Laws, § 614 (1934); Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws, § 117i (Tent. Draft No. 4. 1957).
*528The real property involved in this case has its situs in Shoshone County, Idaho. The majority, however, seeks to distinguish Olympia Mining from the instant case, by citing a line of authorities holding in effect that the local situs rule as stated in Olympia Mining does not apply where the determination of title to real property in another jurisdiction is incidental to an action in contract. This is not such a case. To the contrary, the primary and determinative question at stake is title to an ore vein, which is realty under the applicable law of the situs state. Idaho Code § 5-203. Although the complaint presents this suit as a contract action, the answer, and the affidavits and arguments of the parties, make it clear that the contract is really an ancillary consideration. In order to grant the principal relief sought by the plaintiff, Silver Surprize, Inc., the court will be required to rule squarely on a question of title to realty. The rights of the parties under the contract depend, in all significant respects, on whether the Yankee Girl vein belongs to the plaintiff or to the defendant. The contract will not support the monetary relief the plaintiff seeks unless the plaintiff first establishes its title to the Yankee Girl vein. This suit presents the aspect of an action sounding in trespass, even though the complaint recites a contract.
The trial court correctly recognized that the issue raised is not a dispute as to the construction or operation of a contract. The trial court was not persuaded that the title question could be passed off as merely a factual issue which would have to be decided, along with other factual issues, in the process of trying an action on a contract.
Under the doctrine of extralateral rights as set forth in 30 U.S.C. § 26 (1964), a surface owner may have rights to ore which is actually located beneath the surface boundaries of another person’s patent. If a continuous ore vein extends beneath the surface boundaries of two or more claims, federal law prescribes that title to the ore vein resides in the surface owner under whose claim that ore vein apexes. The owner of the vein may follow the vein wherever it goes, irrespective of surface boundaries. In the *529instant case, the plaintiff is claiming that the defendant wrongfully removed ore from a location beneath the surface boundaries of the plaintiff’s claim. The defendant does not deny the removal, but it does allege that it holds title to the vein from which the ore was removed. This then is the controlling issue in the case. If title is in the defendant, then the plaintiff’s chief claim for relief is defeated, regardless of the contract.
The dispositive issue of fact respecting the existence of the defendant’s asserted extralateral rights is the location of the apex of the Yankee Girl vein. The defendant asserts that the apex is located beneath its surface boundaries and the plaintiff denies this. The location of the apex of the vein, in this case, directly pertains to title to the vein, in the same way as location of surface boundaries directly pertains to the title to a surface claim. The location of the apex is not merely an isolated fact—it is the central, ultimate fact upon which the existence of the defendant’s asserted extralateral rights depends.
When the trial court determined that this suit was in essence a dispute over title to realty, it had no choice but to recognize that subject matter jurisdiction was lacking, under the law of this state. It is seldom that an action nominally on a contract is so tied to an issue of title to realty that the suit must be placed in the local action category. But when this does occur, a court should not hesitate to apply the local action rule. To do otherwise would be to permit the plaintiff, by designating his suit a contract action, to confer jurisdiction upon the court.
I am convinced that the trial court correctly analyzed this suit as a local action to determine title to real property situated in another jurisdiction, and that Washington courts lack jurisdiction over the subject matter in this case. Therefore, the trial court’s dismissal of the complaint should be affirmed.
Rosellini, Hale, and McGovern, JJ., concur with Hunter, J.