18 Cal. 535 | Cal. | 1861
Cope, J. concurring.
This is an action of ejectment to recover the possession of two lots situated within the city of San Francisco. The plaintiff counts upon a grant made to himself and Salvador Vallejo, in May, 1839, by Juan B. Alvarado, then Governor of California, and a patent of the United States issued upon its confirmation, in March, 1858. The petition presented to the Governor, and upon which the grant issued, solicits a concession of two lots of one hundred varas each, situated at the Desembarcadero, or landing place of Yerba Buena, and describes them as commencing at the point of the Desembarcadero on the sea shore, and running thence in a northerly course to the Playita or little beach, making a front of two hundred varas, and a depth in a westerly direction towards the hill of one hundred varas. We do not use the exact language of the translation given in the record, but state its manifest purport. The grant concedes to the petitioners the two lots at the place and with the bounds designated. The claim under the grant was presented to the Board of United States Land Commissioners for confirmation in February, 1852, and was by the Board adjudged to be valid, and confirmed in February, 1856. The case having been carried by appeal to the United States District Court, the Attorney General gave notice that the appeal would not be prosecuted, and upon the stipulation of the District Attorney to that effect, the Court in April, 1857, ordered the appeal to be dismissed, and allowed the claimants to proceed upon the decree of the Board as upon a final decree. In May following an official survey of the lots was made under the directions of the Surveyor General, and approved by him. Upon the approved survey and decree of confirmation, the United States issued to the claimants their patent of . the lots, with the specific description of the official survey. The
To meet the case thus presented, the defendants produced sundry grants of the same premises, in lots of fifty varas each, made to them or their grantors in 1847 by persons then acting as Alcaldes or Chief Magistrates of the Pueblo of Yerba Buena, or town of San Francisco, and contended that the Board of Land Commissioners had no jurisdiction to pass upon the claim of the plaintiff and Vallejo under the grant of Alvarado, and as a consequence, the subsequent action of the District Court, of the Surveyor, and of the authorities at Washington in issuing the patent, were without authority and void; or, if the Board had such jurisdiction, that the defendants, claiming under the Alcalde grants, were third persons within the meaning of the fifteenth section of the Act of Congress of March 3d, 1851, against whom the decree of confirmation and patent were not conclusive, and that they were in consequence as much at liberty to question the location of the premises as if the grant had never been before the Commission. Proceeding upon this view of the jurisdiction of the Board, and the construction of the fifteenth section, the deferidants directed their proof to show that the premises in controversy were not embraced by the grant in question. The evidence as to the locality of the starting point of the premises granted, known in 1839 as the Desembarcadero or landing place of Yerba Buena, was conflicting. The jury found for the defendants, on the ground, as stated in their verdict, that they could not locate the grant as claimed by the plaintiff.
This Court has held, in repeated instances, that at the date of the conquest of California, which is considered as having been effected on the seventh of July, 1846, and previously, running back as far as 1834, San Francisco was a Mexican pueblo, and the objection to the jurisdiction of the Board and the validity of the patent was based upon the fact that the lots granted to the plaintiff and Vallejo were within the limits of this pueblo. The Court below instructed the jury, in substance, that if the land described in the patent were city, town, or village lots of a city, town, or
These instructions were confessedly based upon the fourteenth section of the Act of Congress of March 3d, 1851, but are not in our judgment warranted by its provisions. The jurisdiction of the Commission over land claims arises from the eighth and fourteenth sections of the act. The eighth section requires every person claiming lands in California by virtue of any right or title derived from the Spanish or Mexican Government, to present the same to the Commission. The fourteenth section qualifies the general language of the eighth section, and excludes from its provisions lots held under grants from any corporation or town to which lands had been granted for the establishment of a town by the Spanish or Mexican Government, and also lots held or claimed by any city, town or village which was in existence on the seventh of July, 1846, and provides that the claims for the same shall be presented by the corporate authorities of the town, or if the land upon which the city, town or village was situated was originally granted to an individual, in the name of such individual. The evident object of this section was to aid lot holders who claimed title from a common source— from the authorities of a pueblo or town, or from an individual who
A similar construction was given to the fourteenth section by the Board in the consideration of the claim presented by the city of San Francisco, and its jurisdiction to pass upon claims of individual lot holders under grants from the» former Governors, upon their separate presentation, has been asserted by it in repeated instances, and this jurisdiction has been recognized by the Unitpd States District Court. A denial at this day of such jurisdiction, and the validity of proceedings consequent thereon, would lead to the disturbance of numerous titles, and injuriously affect vast interests within the limits of the city. We have no doubt of the jurisdiction, and that to the patent, issued to the plaintiff and Vallejo, the same operation and effect should be accorded as to any other patent, regular upon its face, issued by the United States, upon the confirmation of a claim under a Mexican grant, pursuant to the Act of Congress of March 3d, 1851.
As to the operation and effect of this patent there can be no question. It is the last act of a series of proceedings taken for the recognition and confirmation of the claim of the patentees to the land it embraces, the first of which was the petition to the Board of Land Commissioners. With respect to such proceedings
But the patent has a still further operation and effect. It is not merely a deed of the United States, conveying whatever interest they may have held in the premises at the institution of proceedings before the. Land Commission. It is also a record of the Government, showing its action and judgment with respect to the title of the patentees at the date of the cession. By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States in effect stipulated for the protection of the rights of property of the inhabitants of the ceded .territory. Independent 'of treaty stipulations, the inhabitants were entitled to such protection by the law of nations. The obligation thus devolved upon the Government upon the acquisition of the country was political in its character, and to be executed in such manner as the Government might judge expedient. To execute this obligation necessarily required an inquiry into the nature and extent of the claims asserted to property at the date of the treaty. This inquiry involved something more than an investigation into the genuineness of the title papers of the patentees; it also involved an ascertainment of the quantity, location and boundary of the property claimed. Thus in the case of the United States v. Fossatt, (21 Howard, 449) Mr. Justice Campbell, in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, said: “In affirming a claim to land under a Spanish or Mexican grant to be valid within the law of nations, the stipulations of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the usages of those Governments, we imply something more than that certain papers are genuine, legal and translative of property. We affirm that ownership and possession oland of definite boundaries rightfully attach to the grantee.” By the Act of March 3d, 1851, the Government provided the means for the ascertainment of the character and extent of the titles
The defendants do not question the genuineness of the grant to Leese and Vallejo, but its location. They contend that as to such location they are “ third persons ” within the meaning of the fifteenth section of the Act of March 3d, 1851, and as a consequence, that the patent is not evidence of such location against them. To determine this question, it is necessary to inquire into the nature of the title to the premises, which, it is alleged, they acquired by their subsequent grants; for the “ third persons” within the meaning of the section referred to, who can controvert the location of a grant upon which a patent has issued, are those whose title to the premises patented not only accrued before the duty of the Government and its rights under the treaty attached, but whose title to such premises was at that date such as to enable them to resist successfully any subsequent action of the Government affecting it. (Teschemacher v. Thompson, 18 Cal. 27 ; Waterman v. Smith, 13 Cal. 420.) The defendants claim under grants issued previous to the treaty, in 1847, by persons acting as municipal officers of the Pueblo of San Francisco. It is alleged that those officers possessed
When the grant to Leese and Vallejo passed from the Governor and was received by them, there still remained another proceeding to be taken for the investiture of a complete title. The proceeding was a judicial delivery of the possession. Under the Mexican system this proceeding was an essential ceremony where there was any uncertainty as to the precise bounds of this land granted. That there was such uncertainty in the bounds of the tract, as described in the grant in question, is manifest. The location of the line running from the desembarcadero, or landing place, to the playita, or little beach, is one source of uncertainty. That line might be run in several different directions, materially varying from each other, and yet run in each instance in a northerly course from the starting point. There are other sources of equal uncertainty. A delivery of judicial possession was therefore necessary. This proceeding involved a definite ascertainment of the land to be delivered, and for that purpose required a survey and measurement— in other words, a location of the land. The power of locating the land, as preliminary bo its formal delivery, belonged to the Government, and could not be exercised by the grantees, at least so as to bind the Government. They took .with full knowledge of the right and power of the former Government in this respect, and in strict subordination to them. It does not appear from the record whether that Government ever acted in the matter. Assuming that it did not, the right and power passed to the United States, and could be exercised by them in such manner and at such time as they might deem expedient. The defendants, as junior grantees, took their grants with this knowledge:—that if the military occupation of the country ceased, and the displaced Mexican authorities were restored, they would only take, if in that event they were allowed to take at all, in subordination to the action of those authorities in the location of the elder grant; and that if the United States permanently retained possession of the country, they would take in subordination to like action of the new Government. By the Act of March 3d, 1851, the new Government designated the manner and
The language of Mr. Chief Justice Taney in Fremont v. United States, (17 How. 558) to the effect that a subsequent grantee of a tract with specific boundaries, within the general exterior limits of the grant in that case, would have acquired a superior and better title than the original grantee, has no application. The grant in that case was of a specific quantity, lying within limits embracing a much larger quantity, and the Court gave as the reason for its language, that by the general grant the Government did not bind itself to make no other grant within the territory described, until the survey was made. In the case at bar, the grant is of a tract with designated boundaries, uncertain, it is true, in their character, and to be ascertained and fixed upon the surface of the earth by the Government, but embracing no surplus quantity to be the subject of other grants. There is no analogy between the two cases.
Judgment reversed, and cause remanded for a new trial.