The plaintiff in ejectment must in all cases prove a legal title
to the premises in himself, at the time of the demise laid in the
declaration, and evidence of an equitable title will not be
sufficient for a recovery.
Hence, the holder of a New Madrid certificate, upon which no
patent had been issued, and whilst it was yet uncertain whether or
not the proposed location of it was reserved under older surveys,
could not recover in ejectment. The legal title was in the
government.
The cases referred to, showing the necessity of preserving the
distinction between legal and equitable rights and remedies.
The practice of allowing ejectments to be maintained in state
courts upon equitable titles cannot affect the jurisdiction of the
courts of the United States.
The case is explained in the opinion of the Court.
Page 62 U. S. 482
MR. JUSTICE DANIEL delivered the opinion of the Court.
The defendant in error, as a citizen of the State of Illinois,
instituted an action of ejectment against the plaintiff in the
court above mentioned, and obtained a verdict and judgment against
him for a tract of land, described in the declaration as a tract of
land situated in St. Louis County, being the same tract of land
known as United States survey No. 2,489, and located by virtue of a
New Madrid certificate No. 105, and containing six hundred and
forty acres.
Both the plaintiff and defendant in the circuit court trace the
origin of their titles to the settlement claim of one James Y.
O'Carroll, who, it is stated, obtained permission as early as the
6th of September, 1803, from the Spanish authorities to settle on
the vacant lands in Upper Louisiana, and who, in virtue of that
permission, and on proof by one Ruddell of actual inhabitancy and
cultivation prior to the 20th of December, 1803, claimed the
quantity of one thousand arpens of land near the Mississippi, in
the District of New Madrid. Upon this application, the land
commissioners, on the 13th of March, 1806, made a decision by which
they granted to the claimant one thousand arpens of land, situated
as aforesaid, provided so much be found vacant there.
On the 14th of December, 1810, the commissioners, acting again
on the claim of O'Carroll for one thousand arpens, declare that the
board grant to James Y. O'Carroll three hundred and fifty acres of
land, and order that the same be surveyed as nearly in a square as
may be, so as to include his improvements. The claim thus allowed
by the commissioners was, by the operation of the 4th section of
the Act of Congress approved March 3, 1813, enlarged and extended
to the quantity of six hundred and forty acres.
Vide Stat.
p. 813, vol. 2.
In the year 1812, a portion of the lands in the County of New
Madrid having been injured by earthquakes, Congress, by an Act
approved on the 17th of February, 1815, provided that:
"Any person or persons owning lands in the County of New Madrid,
in the Missouri Territory, with the extent the said county had on
the 10th day of November, 1812, and whose lands have been
materially injured by earthquakes, shall be and they hereby are
authorized to locate the like quantity of land on any of the public
lands of the said territory, the sale of which is authorized by
law."
Stat. vol. 3, p. 211.
On the 30th of November, 1815, the recorder of land titles for
Missouri, upon evidence produced to him that the six hundred and
forty acre grant to James Y. O'Carroll had been materially injured
by earthquakes, in virtue of the act of Congress of 1815, granted
to said O'Carroll New Madrid certificate No. 105, by which the
grantee was authorized to locate six hundred and forty acres of
land on any of the public lands in the Territory of Missouri, the
sale of which was authorized by law. Upon the conflicting claims
asserted under this New Madrid certificate, and upon the
ascertainment of the locations attempted in virtue of its
authority, this controversy has arisen.
Each party to this controversy professes to deduce title from
the settlement right of O'Carroll through mesne conveyances
proceeding from him. With respect to the construction of these
conveyances, several prayers have been presented by both plaintiff
and defendant, and opinions as to their effect have been expressed
by the circuit court; but as to the rights really conferred, or
intended to be conferred, by these transactions, it would,
according to the view of this cause taken by this Court, be not
merely useless but premature and irregular to discuss, and much
more so to undertake to determine them.
This is an attempt to assert at law and by a legal remedy a
right to real property -- an action of ejectment to establish the
right of possession in land.
That the plaintiff in ejectment must in all cases prove a legal
title to the premises in himself, at the time of the demise laid in
the declaration, and that evidence of an
equitable estate
will not be sufficient for a recovery, are principles so elementary
and so familiar to the profession as to render unnecessary the
citation of authority in support of them. Such authority may,
Page 62 U. S. 484
however, be seen in the cases of
Goodtitle v. Jones, 7
T.R. 49; of
Doe v. Wroot, 5 East. 132; and of
Roe v.
Head, 8 T.R. 118. This legal title the plaintiff must
establish either upon a connected documentary chain of evidence, or
upon proofs of possession of sufficient duration to warrant the
legal conclusion of the existence of such written title.
By the Constitution of the United States and by the acts of
Congress organizing the federal courts and defining and in vesting
the jurisdiction of these tribunals, the distinction between common
law and equity jurisdiction has been explicitly declared and
carefully defined and established. Thus, in Section 2, Article III,
of the Constitution, it is declared that
"The judicial power of the United States shall extend to all
cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws
of the United States,"
&c.
In the act of Congress "to establish the judicial courts of the
United States," this distribution of law and equity powers is
frequently referred to, and by the 16th section of that act, as if
to place the distinction between those powers beyond
misapprehension, it is provided
"That suits in equity shall not be maintained in either of the
courts of the United States in any case where plain, adequate, and
complete remedy may be had at law,"
at the same time affirming and separating the two classes or
sources of judicial authority. In every instance in which this
Court has expounded the phrases, proceedings at the common law and
proceedings in equity, with reference to the exercise of the
judicial powers of the courts of the United States, they will be
found to have interpreted the former as signifying the application
of the definitions and principles and rules of the common law to
rights and obligations essentially legal, and the latter, as
meaning the administration with reference to equitable as
contradistinguished from legal rights, of the equity law as defined
and enforced by the Court of Chancery in England.
In the case of
Robinson v.
Campbell, 3 Wheat. 221, this Court have said:
"By the laws of the United States, the circuit courts have
cognizance of all suits of a civil nature at common law and in
equity, in cases which fall within the limits
Page 62 U. S. 485
prescribed by those laws. By the 24th section of the Judiciary
Act of 1789, it is provided, that the laws of the several states,
except where the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United
States, shall otherwise provide, shall be regarded as rules of
decision in trials at common law in the courts of the United
States, in cases where they apply. The act of May, 1792, confirms
the modes of proceeding then used at common law in the courts of
the United States, and declares that the modes of proceeding in
suits in equity shall be according to the principles, rules, and
usages, which belong to courts of equity, as contradistinguished
from courts of common law, except so far as may have been provided
for by the act to establish the judicial courts of the United
States. It is material to consider whether it was the intention of
Congress by these provisions to confine the courts of the United
States, in their mode of administering relief, to the same
remedies, and those only, with all their incidents, which existed
in the courts of the respective states; in other words, whether it
was their intention to give the party relief
at law, where
the practice of the state courts would give it, and
relief in
equity only when, according to such practice, a plain,
adequate, and complete remedy could not be had at law. In some
states in the Union, no court of chancery exists to administer
equitable relief. In some of those states, courts of law recognize
and enforce in suits at law all equitable rights and claims which a
court of equity would recognize and enforce; in others, all relief
is denied, and such equitable claims and rights are to be
considered as mere nullities at law. A construction, therefore,
that would adopt the state practice in all its extent would at once
extinguish in such states the exercise of equitable jurisdiction.
The acts of Congress have distinguished between remedies at common
law and equity, yet this construction would confound them. The
Court therefore thinks that to effectuate the purposes of the
legislature, the remedies in the courts of the United States are to
be at common law or in equity -- not according to the practice in
the state courts, but according to the principles of common law and
equity, as distinguished and defined in that country from which we
derive our knowledge of those principles. "
Page 62 U. S. 486
In the case of
Parsons v.
Bedford, 3 Pet. 446-447, this Court, in speaking of
the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution, and of the state of
public sentiment which demanded and produced that amendment,
said:
"The Constitution had declared, in the 3d article, that the
judicial power shall extend to all cases
in law and equity
arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and
treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority
&c. It is well known that in civil suits in courts of equity
and admiralty, juries do not intervene, and that courts of equity
use the trial by jury only in extraordinary cases. When, therefore,
we find that the amendment requires that the right of trial by jury
shall be preserved in suits at common law, the natural conclusion
is that the distinction was present in the minds of the framers of
the amendment. By
common law, they meant what the
Constitution denominated in the 3d article LAW, not merely
suits which the common law recognized among its old and
settled proceedings, but suits in which legal rights were to be
ascertained and determined, in contradistinction to those where
equitable rights alone were recognized and equitable
remedies administered."
The same doctrine is recognized in the case of
Strother v.
Lucas, 6 Pet. 768-769, and in the case of
Parish v.
Ellis, 16 Pet. 453-454. So too, as late as the year
1850 in the case of
Bennett v.
Butterworth, 11 How. 669, THE CHIEF JUSTICE thus
states the law as applicable to the question before us:
"The common law has been adopted in Texas, but the forms and
rules of pleading in common law cases have been abolished, and the
parties are at liberty to set out their respective claims and
defenses in any form that will bring them before the court, and as
there is no distinction in its courts between cases at law and in
equity, it has been insisted in this case on behalf of the
defendant in error that this Court may regard the plaintiff's
petition either as a declaration at law or a bill in equity.
Whatever may be the laws of Texas in this respect, they do not
govern the proceedings in the courts of the United States, and
although the forms of proceedings
Page 62 U. S. 487
and practice in the state courts have been adopted in the
district court, yet the adoption of the state practice must not be
understood as confounding the principles of law and equity, nor as
authorizing legal and equitable claims to be blended together in
one suit. The Constitution of the United States, in creating and
defining the judicial power of the general government, establishes
this distinction between law and equity, and a party who claims a
legal title must proceed at law, and may undoubtedly proceed
according to the forms of practice in such cases in the state
court. But if the claim be an equitable one, he must proceed
according to the rules which this Court has prescribed regulating
proceedings in equity in the courts of the United States."
The authorities above cited are deemed decisive against the
right of the plaintiff in the court below to a recovery upon the
facts disclosed in this record, which show that the action in that
court was instituted upon an equitable, and not upon a legal,
title. With the attempt to locate O'Carroll's New Madrid warrant
No. 150, in addition to its interference with what was called the
St. Louis common, there were opposed five conflicting surveys. In
consequence of this state of facts, the Commissioner of the General
Land Office, on the 19th of March, 1847, addressed to the Surveyor
General of Missouri the following instructions:
"If, on examination, it should satisfactorily appear to you that
the lands embraced by said surveys were at the date of O'Carroll's
location reserved for said claims, the O'Carroll location must
yield to them, because such land is interdicted under the New
Madrid Act of the 17th of February, 1815; but if, at the time of
location, either of the tracts was not reserved, but was such land
as was authorized by the New Madrid Act to be located, the New
Madrid claim No. 105 will of course hold valid against either tract
in this category. The fact on this point can be best determined by
the Surveyor General from the records of his office, aided by those
of the recorder. If there be no valid claim to any portion of the
residue of the O'Carroll claim, and such residue was such land as
was allowed by the New Madrid Act of 17th of February, 1815, to be
located, on the return here of a proper
Page 62 U. S. 488
plat and patent certificate for said residue, a patent will
issue."
At this point the entire action of the land department of the
government terminated. No act is shown by which the extent of the
St. Louis common, said to be paramount, was ascertained; no
information supplied with respect to the validity or extent of the
conflicting surveys, as called for by the commissioner; no plat or
patent certificate, either for the whole of the warrant or for any
residue to be claimed thereupon, ever returned to the General Land
Office, and no patent issued. The plaintiff in the circuit court
founded his claim exclusively and solely upon the New Madrid
warrant.
The inquiry then presents itself as to who holds the legal title
to the land in question. The answer to this question is that the
title remains in the original owner, the government, until it is
invested by the government in its grantee. This results from the
nature of the case, and is the rule affirmed by this Court in the
case of
Bagnall v. Broderick, in which it is declared,
"that Congress has the sole power to declare the dignity and
effect of titles emanating from the United States, and the whole
legislation of the government in reference to the public lands
declares the patent to be the superior and conclusive evidence of
the
legal title. Until it issues, the fee is in the
government, which by the patent passes to the grantee, and he is
entitled to enforce the possession in ejectment."
13 Pet.
38 U. S. 436
A practice has prevailed in some of the states and amongst them
the State of Missouri of permitting the action of ejectment to be
maintained upon warrants for land, and upon other titles not
complete or legal in their character, but this practice, as was so
explicitly ruled in the case of
Bennett v.
Butterworth, 11 How. 669, can in no wise affect the
jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, who, both by the
Constitution and by the acts of Congress, are required to observe
the distinction between legal and equitable rights, and to enforce
the rules and principles of decision appropriate to each.
The judgment of the circuit court is to be reversed with
costs.