Daly v. Wallace

STONE, J.

Appellant appeals from an adverse judgment in cross actions to quiet title to mining claims.

This is the third lawsuit involving purported relocations of six gypsite placer mining claims, five contiguous and one separate, all located in the Red Rock Mining District near Cantil, Kern County. The first prior action turned, in part,

[691]

oil whether respondent’s predecessors performed the required annual assessment work for 1956-1957.

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The second action involved the same question as to the year 1958-1959. In each case the court found that respondent and her predecessors had performed the required work or improvement on the claims.

This action involves the in-between year, appellant resting her assertion of title upon a relocation of the six claims in 1958 following an alleged failure of respondent and her predecessors to perform annual assessment work for 1957-1958. At the outset, respondent asserts that her quiet title judgment involving the 1958-1959 annual assessment work is res judicata, and that appellant cannot go behind this judgment and attack the title upon the ground that work was not done for a prior assessment year.

We need not explore the question of res judicata, however, as we conclude, for reasons appearing below, the trial court’s finding that respondent and her predecessors performed the annual assessment work for the year 1957-1958 must be sustained, and that appellant's attempted relocation of the claims in 1958 is void.

Respondent was required to prove that her predecessors performed labor or made improvements equal in value to $100 for each claim during the 1957-1958 annual assessment year. (30 U.S.C.A. § 28.) Under the doctrine of group development, annual assessment work performed on any one or more contiguous claims inures to the benefit of all claims in the group.

(Pepperdine

v.

Keys,

198 Cal.App.2d 25, 31 [17 Cal.Rptr. 709] ;