A writ of error was prosecuted to the Supreme Court of
Louisiana, under the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act of
1787 to revise the judgment of that court. The cause was dismissed,
as it did not appear that any question was presented in the court
below within the purview of the act, the case having been decided
upon a collateral matter, independent of and wholly aside from any
such question.
This case was submitted to the Court on the record by Mr. Brent
for the plaintiff in error.
Afterward, Coxe, for the defendant, gave to the Court the
following statement in support of a motion to dismiss the suit for
want of jurisdiction.
"This suit was instituted to recover $10,000, with interest.
This was the alleged consideration money paid by Keene for the
conveyance of a tract of land described in the record. The ground
of the claim is the covenant of warranty contained in the deed, and
the eviction of the plaintiff by a paramount title,
viz.,
that of the United States."
The only evidence of this eviction was that the United States
caused a survey to be made of this among other lands.
The district Court of the state decided that this survey did not
amount to an eviction.
This judgment was affirmed in the Supreme Court.
The present writ of error is directed to the Supreme Court of
Louisiana, by virtue of the twenty-fifth section of the judicial
act of 1789.
The defendants in error submit that the decision of the Supreme
Court of Louisiana -- that the matter proved,
viz., the
mere fact that the officers of the United States had surveyed the
land in question does not amount to an eviction -- is not a
decision against any claim, title or exemption under the
Constitution, treaties, or laws of the United States or in any way
within the provisions of the judicial act.
Page 35 U. S. 292
MR. JUSTICE STORY delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of Louisiana,
brought here under the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act of
1789, ch. 20, to revise the judgment of that court.
The suit was originally brought by the plaintiff in error in the
state district court against the defendants in error, as heirs and
representatives of Daniel Clark to recover the purchase money and
interest for a certain tract of land situate near Baton Rouge,
between the Rivers Perdido and Mississippi, east and west, and the
thirty-first degree of north latitude, and the River Iberville,
north and south, which Clark sold to the plaintiff in error in
1807, for $10,000. The petition states that Clark derived his title
thereto from or through a grant of the same from the Spanish
government after the Treaty of St. Ildefonso in the year 1800, by
which it was ceded to France by Spain, and that France afterwards,
in 1803, ceded it to the United States as a part of Louisiana, and
that in virtue thereof, the United States acquired a just title
thereto, and under the acts of Congress, have entire possession of
the same; and the petitioner refers to certain accompanying
documents, marked No. 1 and 2, to prove the sale to him, and the
occupation and possession of the United States. The defendants in
error pleaded the general issue, and judgment was given in the
state district court for them. The plaintiff in error then carried
the same, by appeal to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and the only
point that appears there to have been raised or decided was whether
the plaintiff in error bad been evicted from the land or not.
According to the practice in Louisiana, the opinion of the supreme
court is stated on the record. After reciting the state of the
pleadings, it proceeds as follows:
"The plaintiff contends he showed an eviction, as the evidence
establishes, that the whole land along the stream, on which the
premises are situated, from its source to its mouth, was surveyed
by order of the United States. It does not appear to us that the
district court erred. It is true the surveyors must have
necessarily passed near the plaintiff's land in effecting the
survey. It does not appear to us that it was occupied, or that any
person on it was thereby disturbed."
And then, after adverting to the case of
Bessy v.
Pintade, the court added:
"The present case differs from that in this that here the United
States have directed an act of ownership over a vast tract of
country, some small part of which may well be supposed to have been
lawfully possessed and even owned by
Page 35 U. S. 293
individuals. This does not appear to us to amount to a denial of
title of any of these individuals, much less an eviction in this
particular case."
This is the whole of the opinion of the court, from which it is
apparent, that the judgment did not turn upon any question within
the purview of the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act of
1789, ch. 20, but wholly upon a collateral matter, independent of
and wholly aside from any such question. It was merely a decision
that a public survey, under the authority of the United States, of
a large tract of country, including the premises, was not,
per
se, an eviction of the plaintiff in error.
Upon the grounds, therefore, of the doctrine already stated by
this Court at this term in the case of
Crowell v. Randel,
the cause must be
Dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
