This is a suit like that of United States v. New Orleans Pacific Railway Company,
The bill adequately alleged that when the land described in it was patented to the railway company it was occupied by and in the possession of Lewis Andrews and his wife, Annie Jason Andrews, actual settlers and qualified to enter public lands of the United States. It further alleged the application of Andrews on March 18, 1920, to enter the said tract of land as a homestead, the suspension of the application by the Secretary of the Interior on account of conflict with the railway company’s patent until March 24, 3926, when the matter was finally determined in the Land Office in favor of the settlers. The prayer was that plaintiff have judgment canceling and declaring null and void the patent to the lands in suit, and in the alternative, for a decree requiring the defendants, as trustees for Annie Jason, to execute a deed to her. The defendants, remote vendees of the railway company under the patent granted to it on December 28, 1892, appeared and first by motion to dismiss, later by answer, pleaded that the suit of the United States to annul the patent was barred by the five years’ statute of March 2, 1896 (29 Stat. 42, 43 USCA §§ 900 and note, 901, 902), and that its suit for the use and benefit of Annie Jason was barred by the judgment which she had suf
Some three years after the suit was filed, Annie Jason intervened in the action. She set up the facts substantially as the United States had done, and alleging further that she had never surrendered but had constantly maintained her possession of the land in suit, joined in the prayer of the United States that defendants be decreed to be her trustees, and required to execute a deed to her. Reference to a master resulted in findings of fact and of law favorable to plaintiff and intervenor on their alternative demand that defendants be decreed to hold the title in trust for Annie Jason, and a recommendation that they be directed to make her a deed. The District Judge in the main overruled the exceptions to the master’s report, and confirming his findings in substance, entered the recommended decree.
The case comes here on one point, the claimed error of the court in not sustaining the plea of res judicata based on the judgment of the state court in the petitory action. The facts regarding this action are all of. record. They are: On February 12, 1924, while the contest over the application by Lewis Andrews as a homesteader on this land was still pending in the Department of the Interior, the Opelousas-St. Landry Securities Company, and other defendants, filed theirpetitory action against Annie Jason, widow of Lewis Andrews, alleging themselves to be the owners and entitled to the possession, of the lands in controversy. On March 19 Annie Jason filed her plea of lis pendens, informing the court of the pendency in the Department of the Interior of the contest qver the application of Lewis Andrews, and that should it be decided in her favor, patent would issue to her, and praying that plaintiff’s suit be dismissed. No action ap- . pears to have been taken on this plea. On the same day she filed her answer, which consisted of a plea of prescription of ten, twenty, and thirty years, and a claim for the value of her improvements. Though the record contains no statement of the evidence adduced, the judgment recites quite fully what occurred, and what was adjudicated in the suit. It recites that “plaintiff gave chain of title baek to the Government,” that “defendant interposed the plea of prescription of thirty years,” claiming the whole of the property covered by plaintiffs’ deed, “but there is not a scintilla of evidence in the record to show the particular spot which Lewis Andrews possessed or the extent of the same.” That “the defendant’s possession of this property is without color of title and is unlawful ab initio” and that “she is a mere squatter.” On these grounds, and these grounds alone, that one claiming by prescription must identify by pleading and by proof the part he claims, Ellis v. Prevost,
The issues presented in this suit of the invalidity of the patent, and of the right of Annie Jason to the land, were not decided. They were not even presented for decision. The master and the District Judge, citing Gould v. Pollard,
Conceding that in a petitory action in Louisiana a defendant is bound to plead all the title he then has, under which he claims to be the owner, and that when the defendant stands upon possession, without advancing title in himself, a final judgment rendered in favor of plaintiff may be presented as res judicata against any title which defendant possessed at the time but omitted to plead, Shaffer v. Scuddy,
Appellant, vigorously countering this conclusion, urges that not the United States, but Annie Jason, is the real party at interest here, and that this suit, “being brought for the benefit of private persons, the Government having no interest in the result, the United States are barred from bringing the suit, if the persons, for whose benefit suit was brought, would be barred.” Curtner v. U. S.,
In the first ease cited the court held that plaintiff having failed in the first suit to set up his right to acquire the land from the state in whom the title was outstanding, was now barred from doing so, saying: “ ‘It frequently happens that a defendant in such an action stands upon possession, without advancing title in himself. The judgment in such an action under pleadings of that character would close the door to the subsequent setting up by the defendant of gny title which he actually then had.’ This language applies not only to a ‘closed’ or ‘absolute’ title, but to any inchoate real claims or rights which defendant has in the property which may ripen into a title of ownership under a then outstanding title of a person other than the plaintiff.”
We think it perfectly clear that tlie Master and the District Judge were right in the view they took. The United States was not a party to the petitory suit. It could not have been sued there. Annie Jason did not represent it. She was engaged in pressing an adversary contest in the Department of the Interior to have her right of entry upon the land as public land established and declared. Until that determination came down in her favor, she had neither legal nor equitable title to the land. She had only the opportunity of acquiring title under the public land laws. Nothing in section 2 of the Act of 1887 indicates the purpose to give it the effect of a grant to the occupants. On the contrary, its explicit language makes it dear that until patent rightfully issued, or right of entry awarded, the lands remained public lands of the United States. U. S. v. New Orleans Pacific Ry. (C. C. A.)
The nature of this suit, of the rights asserted in it, and of the position in it of the United States are definitely settled in U. S. v. New Orleans Pacific Ry.,
Denying effect to a plea of res judicata, the court, in Schlater v. Le Blanc,
While in Kennon v. Brooks-Scanlon Co.,
Bes judicata is a principle of peace. Under its influence an end. is put to controversies. Parties and their privies are made to abide definitive and final judgments and litigations are concluded. Under the influence •of this demand for finality and peace, it is usually said that judgments settle not only all matters actually, litigated in causes, but also all matters which could have been properly litigated in them. Sometimes the principle is broadly laid down that a judgment is not only final as to the matters actually determined, but as to any other matter which the parties might have litigated in the cause, and which they might have had decided. Because. it is a principle of justice and peace, and not a Procrustean formula to be applied with rigidity and rigor, courts and text-writers have often found it necessary to qualify this broad statement.
Bearing out this qualification, it is well settled in jurisdictions preserving by separate administration, the distinction between law and equity, that an adverse decision at law does not settle the equitable rights of the parties. Grand View Building Ass’n v. Northern Assurance Co. of London,
The most that could be claimed here as to the petitory action is that Annie Jason might have defeated that suit by asserting an outstanding title in the United States -because of the invalidity of the patent. She certainly could not, while the matter stood unadjudicated in the Department, have held the de
We conclude that there is nothing in the petitory judgment obtained by defendants while the application of Andrews for the award of land to him was pending in the Land Office, to bar or affect either the right of the United States to assert the claim for his widow, or for her to assert it for herself. As to the United States, it was neither a party to that action nor in privity with it; while as to Annie Jason, she neither asserted nor could assert there that which she asserts here, not in despite, hut in recognition of defendants’ legal title and the judgment they got in the petitory suit, that they hold the title in trust for her.
The judgment is affirmed.
Notes
Section 2 of the act provided: “That all said lands occupied by actual settlers at the date of the definite location of said road and still remaining in their possession or in the possession of their heirs or assigns shall be held and deemed excepted from said grant and shall be subject to entry under the public land laws of the United States.” (24 Stat. 3S1.)
“That in the cases where patents have issued to said railway company for lands which have or may hereafter be adjudged by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to have been in the possession of actual settlers at the date of the definite location of said railway company's road and title is in said railway company, said trustees agree to make, without delay, conveyance thereof to the United States, and where such have been sold by said railway company to third persons the company undertakes to recover title thereto without delay and convey the same to said settlers or to the United States.”
“The statute was a donation of public lands for railroad purposes, and tlie proviso expressly excepted from tlie grant all lands occupied by actual settlers, and declared such lands subject to entry. The actual occupancy of such lands excepted them from the operation of the grant, and the rights of the settlers quoad the government did not concern the grantee. We can find nothing in the proviso to warrant the construction that the reservation of public lands was to be determined, not by the earmarks of actual occupation, but by the inchoate rights of the particular settler/’
In Aurora City v. West,