Bundrick v. United States

7 Cl. Ct. 532, 1985 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1026
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedMarch 18, 1985
DocketNo. 622-82L
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 7 Cl. Ct. 532 (Bundrick v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bundrick v. United States, 7 Cl. Ct. 532, 1985 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1026 (cc 1985).

Opinion

OPINION

WHITE, Senior Judge.

The plaintiffs in this case seek to recover for the alleged taking by the United States, through inverse condemnation, of an interest in 1,913.99 acres of land and related improvements, situated in Pinal County, Arizona.

Plaintiffs Edward Bundrick and Ruby Bundrick are husband and wife. Plaintiff Yzobel Bundrick is the mother of Edward Bundrick.

The land involved in the case (which, for the sake of convenience, will sometimes be referred to hereafter in the opinion as “the Bundrick land”) is owned by plaintiffs Yzobel Bundrick and Edward Bundrick, the former owning an undivided three-fourths interest and the latter owning an undivided one-fourth interest in the land. (As plain[534]*534tiff Ruby Bundrick appears to be a party to the case only because she is married to plaintiff Edward Bundrick, the term “plaintiffs,” as used subsequently in the opinion, will refer only to plaintiffs Yzobel Bundrick and Edward Bundrick, unless the context plainly indicates otherwise.)

The litigation was first instituted in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. The complaint, as filed with the District Court, coupled the inverse condemnation claim with certain other claims against the United States. On November 29, 1982, the District Court entered an order and judgment which dismissed with prejudice “all claims encompassed by the complaint other than the inverse condemnation claim,” and transferred the case to this court (as successor to the former United States Court of Claims) for proceedings relative to the inverse condemnation claim.

After the conclusion of pretrial proceedings, a trial was held by this court during the latter part of November 1984 in Phoenix, Arizona. The parties requested and were granted an opportunity to file post-trial briefs and requested findings; and this procedure was completed on February 27, 1985.

The Bundrick Land

The Bundrick land is divided into two separate parcels, which are sometimes referred to in the record as “the west parcel” and “the east parcel.” The west parcel includes a total of 1,440 acres and consists of the NE Vi of Section 27 and all of Sections 26 and 35, Township 4 South, Range 17 East, Gila and Salt River Base and Meridian, Pinal County, Arizona. The east parcel includes a total of 473.99 acres and consists of the S V2 SE Vi and the SW Vi of Section 5, and the N V2 SE Vi, the SW Vi NE Vi, the S % NW Vi, and the NW Vi NW Vi of Section 6, Township 5 South, Range 18 East, Gila and Salt River Base and Meridian, Pinal County, Arizona.

A distance of 1 mile separates the two parcels at the nearest points. The east parcel lies to the southeast of the west parcel.

Both the west parcel and the east parcel are traversed by Deer Creek, a valuable source of water.

The plaintiffs’ titles to the tracts of land comprising the two parcels are traceable to several homestead patents that were issued by the United States between 1896 and 1934. The validity of the titles is not questioned by the defendant in this litigation.

The Bundrick land is located approximately 15 miles, by road, northeast of Winkelman, Arizona.

The Bundrick land was acquired in 1953 by plaintiff Yzobel Bundrick and her husband, for use as part of a cattle raising operation. At about the same time — as the Bundrick land itself did not contain sufficient acreage for a viable cattle operation in that part of Arizona — plaintiff Yzobel Bundrick and her husband acquired from the State of Arizona leases on approximately 6V2 sections of land; and they acquired from the United States (represented by the Department of the Interior) leases on approximately 12,800 acres of federal land that the Interior Department was administering under the Taylor Grazing Act (43 U.S.C. § 315 et seq. (1982)). At that time, and in the ranching region of Arizona, if a person owned patented land and there was adjacent to it state or federal land not under lease to someone else, the landowner was given an opportunity to lease the state or federal land. The leased lands were contiguous to the Bundrick land at some point. The combination of the Bundrick land and the leased lands provided plaintiff Yzobel Bundrick and her husband with sufficient acreage for the establishment and operation of a cattle ranch. The ranch was operated for approximately 20 years.

Plaintiff Yzobel Bundrick and her husband made permanent improvements on both the land leased from the State of Arizona and the land leased from the Department of the Interior. A residence, a shack, fences, and corrals were constructed, and two wells were dug, on the state land; and the Bundricks made their home [535]*535in the residence. Fences, another corral, and a scale for weighing cattle were built on the federal land.

In later years, the ranching operation was conducted by plaintiff Yzobel Bundrick and her son, plaintiff Edward Bundrick, although the latter never lived on the ranch.

The San Carlos Mineral Strip

The Bundrick land and the leased lands which formed part of the Bundrick ranch were all located within the exterior boundaries of the area known as the San Carlos Mineral Strip (which, for the sake of convenience, will sometimes be referred to hereafter in the opinion as “the Mineral Strip”).

The Mineral Strip is an area of approximately 232,000 acres. When the San Carlos Indian Reservation was set aside by Executive Orders in 1871 and 1872 for the San Carlos Apache Indian Tribe, the Mineral Strip was part of the reservation. After the creation of the San Carlos Indian Reservation, however, non-Indians who believed that the Mineral Strip contained valuable mineral deposits sought to take the Mineral Strip from the Indians. The Appropriations Act of March 2, 1895, authorized negotiations with the San Carlos Apache Indian Tribe for the cession of the Mineral Strip; and a cession agreement was reached on February 25, 1896. Subsequently, pursuant to the Act of June 10, 1896, the Mineral Strip was ceded formally to the United States by the tribe and became federal land. The cession was made, however, under the condition that such land would be “open to occupation, location, and purchase under the provisions of the mineral land laws only.” (The land of the Mineral Strip will sometimes be referred to hereafter in the opinion as “ceded” land.)

From 1896 to 1934, the United States issued homestead patents covering some ceded lands in violation of the restriction that entry was to be permitted only under the provisions of the mineral land laws; and the United States also erroneously granted some ceded lands to the State of Arizona as school and indemnity lands. In order to prevent further error, the First Assistant Secretary of the Interior on March 30, 1931, withdrew the remaining Mineral Strip lands from all forms of entry or disposition.

On June 18, 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (48 Stat. 984; codified as 25 U.S.C. § 461 et seq. (1982)). The Secretary of the Inferior was expressly authorized by 25 U.S.C. § 463

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Bluebook (online)
7 Cl. Ct. 532, 1985 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1026, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bundrick-v-united-states-cc-1985.