People's Water Co. v. Perkins

RICHARDS, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of plaintiff in an action for ejectment, and from an order denying the defendant’s motion for a new trial.

The premises in question are located in the county of Contra Costa and lie within the limits of the odd-numbered sections of government land embraced within the terms of the congressional grant of such lands to the Central Pacific Railroad Company, of which the plaintiff and respondent herein is the successor in interest. The defendant opposed two contentions to the right of the plaintiff to recover in this action neither of which was sustained by the trial court. The first of these was the contention that the lands in question were originally embraced within the limits of the Mexican grant known as the Romero grant; but the record discloses that the so-called Romero grant was claimed by the brothers Romero to have been made to them by Governor Michel Torino in the year 1844, which claim was presented to the commissioners for the settlement of private land claims in California under the act of March 3, 1851, and was rejected by said commissioners in the year 1853 upon the ground that no such grant had ever been issued, and that upon appeal to the district court and afterward to the supreme court of the United States this decision was affirmed, the final decision of the latter tribunal being given in the year 1863, some time before the act of Congress granting the Central Pacific Railroad Company the odd-numbered sections of the public domain, embracing the lands in question. It follows that at the time of such grant these lands were not within the limits of any existing Mexican grant, and were therefore subject to the congressional grant to the Central Pacific Railroad Company.

In this connection the appellant insists that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover, for the reason that it did not affirmatively show that the lands were not within the limits of some other grant, but this contention we find to have no merit. The plaintiff introduced in evidence the official maps of the Department of the Interior, showing the lands in question to be public lands, and also showing the outlines of the Mexican grants in their vicinity. These maps were sufficient,

[515]

taken with the railroad grant and the conveyance by the railroad to it, to establish