Where the decision of the supreme court of a state was against
the validity of a title to land derived from a confirmation by the
board of commissioners sitting under the act of March 3, 1807, this
Court has jurisdiction, under the 25th section of the Judiciary
Act, to review that decision.
Where the controversy was between two claimants to land, both of
whom held equitable titles only under confirmation by the board of
commissioners above mentioned, the court had a right to go behind
the
prima facie title resulting from the confirmation and
to instruct the jury as to such facts as would tend to establish
the superior equity of one of the claimants.
This was an action of ejectment brought by Berthold and others
against the defendants in error to recover the possession of a
tract of land near St. Louis containing eighty arpens, equivalent
to sixty-eight acres. The action was originally brought in the St.
Louis Land Court. Under the Spanish government, there was a common
field near to the Town of St. Louis called the common field of the
Prairie des Noyers. In this common field were two lots, owned
respectively by two negresses, one of whom was named Florence Flore
and the other named Jeannette or Jeannette Flore. Berthold and the
other plaintiffs in error claimed under Florence Flore, and
McDonald and Mary McRee under Jeannette. Both claims were confirmed
in the manner stated in the opinion of the
Page 63 U. S. 335
Court. The court before which the case was originally tried left
it to the jury to find which of these negresses was the original
confirmee of the land in question, and the Supreme Court of
Missouri affirmed the correctness of this instruction. The verdict
and judgment were for the defendants, and the plaintiffs below
brought the case to this Court by a writ of error issued under the
25th section of the Judiciary Act.
The Supreme Court of Missouri was of opinion that the finding of
the facts embodied in the instructions given by the court clearly
establishes the superiority of the equity of the defendants, and
that the plaintiffs seemed to rely solely on the dry technical
point, that their confirmation was prior in point of time to that
of the defendants -- a view of the case in which that court did not
acquiesce.
Page 63 U. S. 338
MR. JUSTICE CATRON delivered the opinion of the Court.
The board of commissioners sitting at St. Louis to examine
claims to lands according to the Act of March 3, 1807, confirmed to
Charles Gratiot, assignee of Jeannette Flore, two arpens in front,
by forty back, lying in the Prairie des Noyers, near to St. Louis.
This common field lot had been designated by survey, and was well
known. The confirmation was made November 19, 1811.
On the next day, November 20, 1811, the board also confirmed the
same land to Jeannette, a free negro woman. Patent certificates
issued to Gratiot and Jeannette, respectively, dated the same day,
20 November, 1811. Jeannette died about 1803, leaving as her heir a
child named Susan Jeannette, who died about 1840.
Gratiot got a deed for the land from a different person, named
Florence Flore, who conveyed in the name of Jeannette Flore. This
deed was made in 1805, and filed by Gratiot with the recorder, and
on which deed his confirmation by the board was founded. Jeannette
had occupied the land for many years before her death. Florence
Flore had never occupied it, had no claim to it, at any time, and
conveyed in ignorance of what land her deed covered, in all
probability. Gratiot died in 1817, leaving a widow and children.
Neither he nor his heirs pretended to have any claim to the
premises until recently, before this suit was brought by the
heirs.
McDonald and Mary McRee, the defendants, claim under Jeannette,
who got the second confirmation. This suit was instituted in the
Land Court at St. Louis by petition in 1854, under the new Code of
Procedure of Missouri, which confounds all distinction between law
and equity and combines both remedies in the same action. The
petition was answered and a trial had on the merits before the
court and a jury.
The court, on motion of the defendants, instructed the jury as
follows:
"If the jury find from the evidence that the tract of land
confirmed to Jeannette by the board of commissioners includes the
land in controversy, and is the same land which was surveyed for
Jeannette by the authority of the Spanish government;
Page 63 U. S. 339
that said Jeannette, and those acting for or under her, were the
only persons who inhabited, cultivated, or possessed, the said
tract prior to the 20th of December, 1803; that the person who
executed the deed in the name of Jeannette Flore and filed by
Charles Gratiot with the recorder of land titles as one of the
evidences of his claim, is not the person for whom the survey of
said tract of land was so made, but another and a different person,
and that she cultivated and possessed, prior to the 20th of
December, 1803, another and different tract in the same common
field, surveyed for her, by authority of the Spanish government in
the year 1788, embracing no part of the land in controversy, the
jury ought to find for the defendants."
This instruction was excepted to, and a verdict was found for
the defendants.
The cause was brought to the Supreme Court of Missouri by writ
of error, where the judgment of the land court was affirmed, and to
revise this judgment a writ of error was prosecuted out of this
Court under the 25th section of the Judiciary Act.
As the
title of Gratiot's heirs was directly drawn in
question by the foregoing instruction, and as the decision below,
giving the instruction, rejected the title, no doubt can exist in
regard to the authority of this Court to reexamine the decision of
the state courts.
It was so determined, in the case of
Lytle v. Arkansas,
decided here at this term.
The titles in controversy are equities only, no patent having
issued to either claimant on the certificates granted by the board.
51 U. S. 10
How. 374. With these equities, the courts of Missouri were dealing
on parol evidence, reaching behind the confirmation, and the
question is had they the power to do so?
The rule laid down by this Court in the case of
Garland v.
Wynn, 20 How. 8, is
"That where several parties set up conflicting claims to
property, with which a special tribunal may deal, as between one
party and the government, regardless of the rights of others, the
latter may come into the ordinary
Page 63 U. S. 340
courts of justice and litigate the conflicting claims."
The board of commissioners was a special tribunal within the
rule.
The principle was applied in the case of
Lytle v.
Arkansas, cited above.
In these cases, and in several others, the contest was between
claimants under occupant laws giving a preference of entry to
actual settlers and where an applicant obtained the preference and
was allowed to enter the land on producing false affidavits by
which he imposed on the register and receiver to the prejudice of
another's right.
In the instance before us, each of the parties claimed as
occupants for ten consecutive years before the 20th of December,
1803. Gratiot and Jeannette both proved that the latter had
occupied as required, but Gratiot imposed on the board by his false
deed of assignment for the lot obtained by him from Florence Flore,
whose name was untruly signed Jeannette Flore, and by reason of
this imposition he obtained confirmation and a patent certificate,
which his heirs make the foundation of their suit.
Each party here has a good title as against the United States,
the act of 1807 declaring that a confirmation of the board shall be
conclusive against the government.
As both claims were filed in proper time, and the confirmations
were had in due time, the equities are equal, and balance each
other so far as they depend on the confirmations alone, and the
question is can the ordinary courts of justice go behind the right
established by the record confirming Gratiot's claim? To do this,
proof must be heard impeaching his
prima facie title, and
which proof existed when the claim was filed with the recorder and
acted on by the board. In other words, could the state courts go
behind Gratiot's confirmation and, on evidence, compare his equity
with that of Jeannette, and adjudge who the true owner was?
In the case of
Doe v. Eslava,
9 How. 421, this Court came to the conclusion, although it is not
distinctly expressed, that in a contention between double
concessions which balanced each other, proof could be heard, and
must of necessity
Page 63 U. S. 341
be heard, to determine the better right between the contending
parties.
In the cases of
Chouteau v. Eckhart and
Le Bois v.
Bramell, it was held that the grant made by the act of 1812,
of the village commons of St. Charles and St. Louis, and of village
lots, to possessors, gave a title in fee, and that a claimant,
under a Spanish concession subsequently confirmed, could not go
behind the act of Congress and overthrow the legal title it
conferred, and this for the plain reason that neither Chouteau nor
Le Bois had any title, when the act of 1812 was passed, that could
be asserted in a court of justice, and as the political power from
which alone they could take title had cut them off, to that power
they must look for redress of the injury, if any existed.
To conflicts of title of the foregoing description the
principles asserted in the case of
Landes
v. Brant, 10 How. 370, apply.
We have no doubt of the correctness of the decision of the
Supreme Court of Missouri in this cause, and order its judgment to
be
Affirmed.