Maginnis v. Hurlbutt

RICHARDS, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment in fayor of the plaintiff in an action to quiet title.

The lands embraced in said action lie along the shore of Clear Lake between the meander line of the lands granted by

[461]

the United States government to the predecessors of the plaintiff, in the patent on which the latter relies, and the edge of Clear Lake at low-water mark. The defendant, in her pleadings and proofs in the trial court and in her briefs upon this appeal, relies, first, upon a certificate of purchase to said strip of land' issued by the state of California to her predecessor; second, upon adverse possession of said strip of land by H. B. Guernsey, one of the defendant’s predecessors in the possession of said premises; and, third, upon the plaintiff’s laches in the institution of the present action.

As to the first of these contentions, it was resolved by the trial court against the defendant upon evidence which sufficiently tended to show that the lands in question were not swamp and overflowed land within the meaning of that term as used in the act of Congress of September 28, 1850, commonly known as the Swamp Land Act; and hence that the attempted grant of said lands under the act of the state of California, approved March 24, 1893, and commonly known as the Labe Location Act (Stats. 1893, p. 341), conveyed no title to the defendant’s original predecessor claiming under said grant

(Churchill

v.

Kingsbury,

178 Cal. 554, [174 Pac. 329].) In that ease also the claim of the defendant that grants of the character of that under which she claims were "validated by section 3493s of the Political Code, is disposed of adversely to her contention.

The appellant’s second contention is that she has become entitled to said lands by adverse possession. With respect to this contention the evidence is conflicting. The trial court, in its opinion in the decision of said cause, review's this evidence, and arrives at the conclusion that the defendant failed at the trial to establish the right of her predecessor Guernsey to the ownership of said lands by adverse possession. We have examined the record with reference to this subject and are of the opinion that the conclusion of the trial court in this regard must be sustained.