49 Cal. 525 | Cal. | 1875
Lead Opinion
This is an action of ejectment brought to recover a tract of land in Santa Clara county, lying southerly of the city of San José, known as lot numbered six of the five hundred acre lots so-called. At the trial the plaintiff’s had judgment, from which judgment and also from an order denying their motion for a new trial, the defendants bring the present appeal.
The plaintiffs claim the premises by title derived from one Pedro Chaboya, who was the confirmee thereof under certain proceedings taken by him before the District Court of the United States, pursuant to a private Act of Congress passed April 25, 1862, entitled “an Act to authorize the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California to hear and determine upon its merits the claim of Pedro Chaboya to a certain tract of land in California, called La Posa San Juan Bautista.” (Private Acts of the Thirty-seventh Congress of the United States, page 70.)
The defendants claim by this title derived .from the authorities of the city of San José, "which city, as the successor of the former pueblo of that name, was the confirmee of a large area of lands, embracing the premises here in controversy with its exterior limits as confirmed; but there were expressly excepted out of the tract confirmed to the city certain ranchos and smaller tracts designated by name, and also “such other parcels of land as have been by grants from lawful authority vested to private proprietorship, and have been finally confirmed to parties claiming under said grants by the tribunals of the United States, or shall hereafter be finally confirmed to parties claiming thereunder by said tribunals in proceedings now pending therein for that purpose;” all of which said excepted par
The District Court of the United States, pursuant to the private" Act of April 25, 1862, adjudicated the claim of Pedro Chaboya, and in November, 1862, rendered a decree rejecting his claim to the tract called “La Posa San Juan Bautista ” in the private Act of Congress mentioned, except five hundred acres thereof, as to which latter tract, mentioned in the decree as “ the same five hundred acres allotted to said Pedro Chaboya by the authorities of San José and accepted by him,” his claim was confirmed, and upon appeal subsequently taken by Chaboya this decree was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States (Vide 2d Black’s R. S. C. U. S., in which the history of the claim of Chaboya is detailed at length.)
1. At the trial of the action the plaintiffs, for the purpose of establishing the title of Chaboya to the premises in controversy, offered to read in evidence to the jury the decree of the District Court-of November, 1862, just referred to; to this offer the defendants made the objection that the said decree was absolutely void for want of jurisdiction in the District Court to render it; but this objection was overruled, and the decree admitted in evidence, and the action of the Court below in this respect, having been excepted to by the appellants, presents the first point to be considered upon this appeal. 9
It is asserted in support of the objection, that the jurisdiction of the District Court in this instance was derived wholly from the private Act referred to, and must be limited by the terms of that Act, and that it therefore has no authority to adjudicate the claim of Chaboya to any lands other than those called “La Posa de San Bautista,” and designated in the Act itself. To this proposition we accede. It is next insisted that the decree undertakes to confirm the claim not to the La Posa tract of two leagues or to any part thereof, but to one of the lots known as the five-hundred-acre lots of the municipality of San José. But we think that this view cannot be maintained. No claim was made
2. In order to establish the title of their grantor, the city of San José, the defendants, offered in evidence the final decree of confirmation rendered in favor of the city, but this was excluded, and an exception reserved to the ruling of the Court. The objection taken was that the premises in controversy, appearing to have been confirmed to Chaboya, were thereby in terms excepted out of the confirmation to. the city. The argument on the part of the defendants is, that they, or their grantors, the authorities of the city of San José, were “ third persons ” within the meaning of the Act of Congress of March 3, 1851, to provide for the settlement of private land claims in California, and were therefore persons whose rights were not concluded by the confirmation to Chaboya; that hence it was competent for them to prove in this action that the confirmation to Chaboya was not based upon a grant of the lands so confirmed, but that his claim was sheer pretense and fabrication upon his part, though successfully imposed upon the authorities of the United States. But the question thus presented by the appellants is not res integra. It was determined against them in this Court in Bernal v. Lynch (36 Cal. 135), and upon error in the same case in the Supreme Court of the United States in Lynch v. Bernal (9 Wallace 315). The premises in controversy in that case were situate in the city and county of San Francisco, and within the limits defined by the Van Ness Ordinance, and the defendants, and those under whom they claimed, having been in actual possession on and before the 1st day of January, 1855, and continuously since then till 1857, when the action was tried, claimed title through the ordinance, the Act of
3d. In the deed of Pedro Chaboya to Jones, the land conveyed was described as abutting on the east upon the lands of Antonio Chaboya. It is claimed by the defendants that the western line of the lands of Antonio Chaboya as understood to exist at the delivery of the deed, and not the true western line of those lands, as subsequently ascertained and fixed by the authorities of the United States, is to be taken as the eastern line of the land conveyed to Jones. If this construction be adopted, it will follow that the only lands conveyed to Pedro Chaboya would be not his own, but those of his brother Antonio.
But upon settled rules of construction, the call for the lands of Antonio Chaboya must be understood as a call for lands to which Antonio had title, and not a call for other lands supposed at the time to be his.
The case of Cornell v. Jackson, (9 Met. 150,)-determined in 1845, is directly in point upon the question, and is well supported by numerous other authorities. It was an ac
It results from this view, that the offer of the defendants to show that the western line of the lands of Antonio Chaboya was understood in the year 1850 to be to the eastward of its position, as subsequently ascertained and fixed by the authorities of the United States, was correctly denied by the Court below.
Judgment and order denying new trial affirmed as of the day of the last submission of the cause in this Court. Remittitur forthwith.
Dissenting Opinion
I dissent from the argument and conclusion of the Chief Justice upon the third point of his opinion.