Phelps v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

246 P.2d 997, 112 Cal. App. 2d 558, 1952 Cal. App. LEXIS 1063
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedAugust 6, 1952
DocketCiv. 8064
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 246 P.2d 997 (Phelps v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Phelps v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., 246 P.2d 997, 112 Cal. App. 2d 558, 1952 Cal. App. LEXIS 1063 (Cal. Ct. App. 1952).

Opinion

*560 PEEK, J.

This controversy arises out of a dispute between plaintiffs and defendant concerning title to a certain placer mining claim located on the Feather River in Butte County. In 1942 plaintiffs instituted an action against defendant to quiet title to and recover possession of the claim in question, together with damages for trespass thereon. Defendant likewise sought to have its title quieted. Upon the issues so joined the cause proceeded to trial, resulting in a judgment for defendant, which was reversed by this court on appeal. (84 Cal.App.2d 243 [190 P.2d 209]—hearing in Supreme Court denied.) Thereafter plaintiffs amended their complaint and defendant by its answer alleged that the land was then occupied and used by it in the operation of a power plant which furnishes electric power for public use and prayed that if the rights of plaintiffs were found to have been invaded that the court fix the compensation therefor. The cause was again tried, at the conclusion of which judgment was entered in favor of plaintiffs, and defendant has now appealed.

The pertinent facts as stated in the former appeal are as follows:

“The plaintiffs as copartners doing business under the firm name and style of Hatetna Mining and Exploration Company are the successors in interest to a certain mining claim known as the Boulder Bar Placer Mining Claim located and filed by one Louis Lammet and one David Gramps in 1898. . . . The action was dismissed insofar as it involved lands outside the boundaries of Section 27 as described in the above mentioned resurvey of that section approved in 1941.”

“The controversy respecting the disputed title to the property in question arose out of the following factual situation: Section 27, together with other portions of Township 23, was -officially surveyed in 1875 by one E. A. Von Schmidt. The field notes of this survey were incorporated into a plat conformable thereto and approved by the United States Surveyor General for California on November 24, 1875. By that plat Section 27 was shown to be located in the mountains to the east of the Feather River, and according to the field notes made by Von Schmidt in laying out the section on the ground, neither the western nor the northern boundaries thereof touched upon said river.

“Thereafter in 1880, the United States granted and patented all of said Section 27 to the Central Pacific Railroad Company, to whom defendant is successor in interest.

*561 “In 1898, as above stated, presumably in "reliance upon the survey of 1875, plaintiffs’ predecessors located said mining cl a im on land believed to be outside and to the west of the western boundary of said Section 27 and on unsurveyed public land.

“In 1936, the defendant, in connection with a contemplated power project, requested a resurvey of Section 27, and in 1938 the General Land Office ordered the same to be made, naming surveyors Wilson and Forrest to resurvey portions of Township 23, including Section 27, and to extend the official survey into the remaining unsurveyed portions of said township. These surveyors proceededs, or attempted, to retrace the lines called for by Von Schmidt in his notes, but were unable to find many of the monuments or corners which Von Schmidt stated that he set. According to plaintiffs, if such monuments as wooden stakes were set they probably had been destroyed by various fires which had occurred subsequently in that vicinity.

“According to the field notes and the official plat approved on March 17, 1941, Wilson and Forrest, in reestablishing the boundaries of Section 27, found the same to extend over the North Fork of the Feather River and to include substantially all of the plaintiffs’ mining claim. It is to be further noted that the topography called for in the resurvey of the western and northern boundaries of said section and in particular the northwest corner thereof is entirely different from that called for in the Von Schmidt field notes.”

The defendant again contends, as it did on the first appeal, that the United States is the real party in interest or at least an indispensable party in an action to establish its title and oust one who claims public domain as included within a patent, and that the trial court had no jurisdiction over the action. It is further contended that,' since plaintiffs failed to exhaust their administrative remedies by appeal from the adverse decision of the Land Department, no remedy was available to them in the lower court. In this connection, appellant argues that the trial court was without jurisdiction to “review, reverse or annul” the findings and decision of the Land Department.

. After examination of the contentions set forth above it is apparent that all were decided adversely to appellant on the former appeal. It was there held that (headnote 3) : “Parties who held land under a government patent with description thereof in accordance with an official government *562 approved original survey, were not bound by a resurvey ordered by the General Land Office which established different boundaries for such patented land subsequent to issuance of the original patent.” In commenting upon this holding we stated at page 247: “Both respondent [defendant] and appellants [plaintiffs] have urged in their own favor the previously mentioned rule that an official government survey may not be collaterally attacked. However, respondent [defendant] insists that by virtue of said rule plaintiffs are bound by the resurvey of 1941 which reestablished the boundaries of Section 27. Obviously such argument is not valid for it wholly disregards the fact that respondent’s [defendant’s] title is derived from a patent to land described and delineated by the Von Schmidt Survey of 1875 and not the resurvey of 1941. The present case is thus similar on its facts to Gleason v. White, supra [199 U. S. 54], wherein it was held that a patentee who took his land with reference to an original but erroneous survey could not recover from a subsequent patentee who took under a resurvey which included, as . being within the section, a tract of land lying to the east of the section as originally surveyed. To hold otherwise, it was said, would allow the first patentee to profit by a mistake of the government of which he must have been cognizant.”

As to the contention that the plaintiffs are asserting interests adverse to the United States, and that they are bound •by the determination of the Land Department respecting the resurvey of 1941, we further stated on the former, appeal at page 249:

‘^Respondent [defendant] also asserts that appellants [plaintiffs] by failing to appeal from the order of the Land Department dismissing their protest to the survey of Wilson and Forrest, abandoned such protest and likewise thereby failed to exhaust their administrative remedies and consequently they are now precluded from attacking said survey. However, the point is immaterial here for the reason that appellants [plaintiffs] are neither attacking the resurvey nor the right of the government to make it.

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Bluebook (online)
246 P.2d 997, 112 Cal. App. 2d 558, 1952 Cal. App. LEXIS 1063, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/phelps-v-pacific-gas-electric-co-calctapp-1952.