The decision of a court of competent jurisdiction upon adverse
claims to a patent for mineral lands under §§ 2325, 2326 Rev.Stat.
is subject to review in this Court when the amount in controversy
is sufficient.
When several adjoining claims to mineral lands are held in
common, work for the benefit of all done upon any one of them in a
given year to an amount equal to that required to be done upon all
in that year meets the requirements of § 2324 Rev.Stat. The
language of the court in
Jackson v. Roby, 100
U. S. 440, cited and approved.
The defendants in error. as plaintiffs. brought suit in the
District Court for the Third Judicial District of the Territory of
Utah under § 2326, Rev.Stat., to have adverse claims to patents for
mineral lands determined. Judgment for plaintiffs there, which was
affirmed by the supreme court of the territory on appeal. The
defendants appealed to this Court from the judgment of the supreme
court. The facts making the case are stated in the opinion of the
Court.
MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an appeal from the Supreme Court of the Territory of
Utah. The case has its origin in a proceeding under §§ 2325 and
2326 of the Revised Statutes to obtain a patent for mineral lands
of the United States.
Page 111 U. S. 351
The first of these sections requires that after a discovery of a
mine or lode and the steps required to mark out and assert a claim
to it, if the discovered desires a patent, he shall give notice of
that fact by a publication for sixty days, the nature of which is
such as to call the attention to the proceeding of anyone having an
adverse claim. § 2326 requires of any person desiring to contest
the claimant's right to file his adverse claim in the land office
with the particulars of it, under oath. It then declares:
"It shall be the duty of the adverse claimant, within thirty
days after filing his claim, to commence proceeding in a court of
competent jurisdiction to determine the question of the right of
possession, and prosecute the same with reasonable diligence to
final judgment, and a failure to do so shall be a waiver of his
adverse claim."
It is then provided that on filing a copy of the judgment roll
in the case with the register of the land office and making the
other requisite showing, a patent shall issue to the successful
party in the litigation.
It is now urged that such a judgment is not subject to review in
this Court, and the appeal should be dismissed. But it is apparent
that the statute requires a judicial proceeding in a competent
court. What is a competent court is not specifically stated, but it
undoubtedly means a court of general jurisdiction, whether it be a
state court or a federal court, and as the very essence of the
trial is to determine rights by a regular procedure in such court,
after the usual methods, which rights are dependent on the laws of
the United States, we see no reason why, if the amount in
controversy is sufficient in a case tried in a court of the United
States or the proper case is made on a writ of error to a state
court, the judgment may not be brought to this Court for review as
in other similar cases.
Belk v. Meagher, 104 U.
S. 279.
The only question on the merits of the case requiring much
attention arises out of the requirement of § 2324 of the Revised
Statutes that some work should be done on every claim in
Page 111 U. S. 352
every year from the date of the discovery until the issue of the
patent. The language of the statute on the subject is this:
"On each claim located after the tenth day of May, 1872, and
until a patent has been issued therefor, not less than one hundred
dollars' worth of labor shall be performed or improvements made
during each year. On all claims located prior to the tenth of May,
1872, ten dollars' worth of labor shall be performed or
improvements made by the tenth day of June, 1874, and each year
thereafter for each one hundred feet in length along the vein until
a patent has been issued therefor; but when such claims are held in
common, such expenditures may be made upon anyone claim."
It then provides for proceedings in favor of co-owners who do
their work or pay for it, against those who do not, to forfeit
their interest in the claim. This latter clause clearly shows that
one meaning of the phrase "held in common" is where there are more
owners of the claim than one, while the use of the word "claims"
held in common, on which work done on one of such claims shall be
sufficient, shows that there must be more than one claim so held in
order to make the case where work on one of them shall answer the
statute as to all of them. It is not difficult, in looking at the
policy of the government in regard to its mineral lands, to
understand the purpose of this provision. For many years after
discovery of the rich deposits of gold and silver in the public
lands of the United States, millions of dollars' worth of these
metals were taken out by industrious miners without any notice or
attention on the part of the government. The earliest legislation
by Congress simply recognized the obligatory force of the local
rules of each mining locality in regard to obtaining, transferring,
and identifying the possession of these parties.
Later, provision was made for acquiring title to the land where
these deposits were found, and prescribing rules for the location
and identification of claims, and securing their possession against
trespass by others than their discoverers. But in all this
legislation to the present time, though by appropriate proceedings
and the payment of a very small sum,
Page 111 U. S. 353
a legal title in the form of a patent may be obtained for such
mines, the possession under a claim established according to law is
fully recognized by the acts of Congress, and the patent adds
little to the security of the party in continuous possession of a
mine he has discovered or bought. These mineral lands being thus
open to the occupation of all discoverers, one of the first
necessities of a mining neighborhood was to make rules by which
this right of occupation should be governed as among themselves,
and it was soon discovered that the same person would mark out many
claims of discovery and then leave them for an indefinite length of
time without further development and without actual possession, and
seek in this manner to exclude others from availing themselves of
the abandoned mine. To remedy this evil, a mining regulation was
adopted that some work should be done on each claim in every year
or it would be treated as abandoned.
In the statute we are considering, Congress, when it came to
regulate these matters and provide for granting a title to
claimants, adopted the prevalent rule as to claims asserted prior
to the statute, and as to those made afterwards it required one
hundred dollars worth of labor or improvement to be made in each
year on every claim. Clearly the purpose was the same as in the
matter of similar regulations by the miners -- namely to require
every person who asserted an exclusive right to his discovery or
claim to expend something of labor or value on it as evidence of
his good faith and to show that he was not acting on the principle
of the dog in the manger.
When several claims are held in common, it is in the line of
this policy to allow the necessary work to keep them all alive to
be done on one of them. But obviously, on this one, the expenditure
of money or labor must equal in value that which would be required
on all the claims if they were separate or independent. It is
equally clear that in such case the claims must be contiguous, so
that each claim thus associated may in some way be benefited by the
work done on one of them.
The principle is well stated by Judge Sawyer in the case of
Mount Diablo M. & M. Company v. Callison, 5 Sawyer
439. "Work done," he says,
"outside of the claim or outside of
Page 111 U. S. 354
any claim, if done for the purpose and as a means of prospecting
or developing the claim, as in cases of tunnels, drifts, etc., is
as available for holding the claim as if done within the boundaries
of the claim itself. One general system may be formed, well adapted
and intended to work several contiguous claims or lodes, and where
such is the case, work in furtherance of the system is work on the
claims intended to be developed."
In the case of
Jackson v. Roby, decided at the present
term,
109 U. S. 109 U.S.
440, similar language is used:
"It often happens that for the development of a mine upon which
several claims have been located, expenditures are required
exceeding the value of a single claim, and yet without such
expenditures the claim could not be successfully worked. In such
cases, it has always been the practice for the owners of the
different locations to combine and work them as one general claim,
and expenditures which may be necessary for the development of all
the claims may then be made on one of them. . . . In other words,
the law permits a general system to be adopted for adjoining claims
held in common, and in such case the expenditures required may be
made or the labor be performed upon anyone of them."
That was a case of placer mining in which the tailings from one
claim were carried by a flume and deposited on another which was
contiguous, and it was held this latter claim was not aided, but
its development rather injured, by this work. This claim was not,
therefore, kept valid by such work, and some remarks were made in
the opinion which would not perhaps be strictly applicable to
discoveries and works done in developing lodes or veins.
In the case before us, the appellees became successively owners
of three claims contiguous to each other, supposed to be located on
the same lode. These were first, the Parley's Park claim; second,
the Central; and third, the Lady of the Lake. They continued their
work on the Parley's Park claim from 1872 until July 19, 1878, when
they transferred it to the Lady of the Lake claim, and did no more
work on the other until September 13, 1879, when one Cassidy,
claiming that the Parley's Park claim was forfeited for want of
work on it for more than a year, located a mining claim called the
Accidental,
Page 111 U. S. 355
which embraces the premises in dispute and which is part of the
Parley's Park claim.
This claim of Cassidy -- the Accidental -- is the one on which
appellants, who became its owners, now rely, and if the work done
on the Lady of the Lake is not work done in common on the three
claims of appellees within the meaning of the statute, the claim of
the appellant must prevail.
The finding of facts by the court below on that point is as
follows:
"5th. That during the year beginning on the 19th of July, 1878,
the owners of the Parley's Park claim were also the owners of two
certain claims called, respectively, the Central and Lady of the
Lake -- the Central adjoining the Parley's Park, and Lady of the
Lake adjoining the Central mining claim -- and that, with a view to
the future working and development of all three of said claims, the
owners thereof located what is called the main shaft in the Lady of
the Lake surface ground. That said shaft is in such proximity to
said Parley's Park mining claim that work in it has a tendency to
develop said claim, and said shaft was located and intended for the
purpose of developing all of said claims."
"I find that during said last-named year, work was prosecuted in
said shaft, and by improvements made thereat exceeding in value
$300, and of not less than two thousand dollars in value. No work
was done in said year after July 19, 1878, and prior to the 15th
day of September, 1879, in the Parley's Park surface ground, or
within its limits, by the owners thereof."
We are of opinion that this brings the case clearly within the
principles we have laid down, and the work was effectual to protect
the Parley's Park claim against an intruder.
By the Act of February 11, 1875, 18 Stat. 315, § 2324 was so
amended that work on a tunnel in a mine should be held to dispense
with work on the surface, and taken and considered as work expended
on the lode, whether located prior to or since the passage of that
act.
We are not able to see that this affects the character of other
work to be done or improvements to be made according to the law as
it stood before, except as it gives a special value to making a
tunnel.
The questions raised on the admission of evidence to prove the
existence and discovery of a lode by defendants were, we think,
well decided, and need no further comment.
The decree of the Supreme Court of Utah is
affirmed.