New England & Coalinga Oil Co. v. Congdon

SLOSS, J.

This action was brought to recover the possession of a quarter-section of land situate in Fresno County, and damages for the withholding thereof. The defendants had judgment, and the plaintiff appeals from the judgment and from an order denying its motion for a new trial.

The land in controversy is a part of the surveyed public land of the United States and is claimed by the plaintiff to contain petroleum and other mineral oils. The predecessors of the plaintiff, on January 1, 1903, undertook to make a mineral location on said land by posting a notice and marking the boundaries of their location upon the ground. On the following day they filed a copy of their notice of location in the office of the recorder of Fresno County. The complaint alleges that the locators took immediate possession of the land and retained it until the eleventh day of November, 1903, when they .transferred their interest in said land to the plaintiff who, upon said transfer being made, took possession of said land and remained in the peaceable possession thereof until the twenty-fourth day of October, 1904. On the last named day, the defendants entered upon said land and have ever since excluded the plaintiff therefrom.

[213]

The court found that the predecessors of plaintiff did not remain in possession after the second day of January, 1903, and that plaintiff never entered into possession and was not in possession at the time of defendant’s entry on the twenty-fourth day of October, 1904. It also found that on January 1, 1903, no valuable mineral deposits or petroleum or mineral oil were known to be contained in the land, and that no such deposits or petroleum or mineral oils had then been, nor have they since been, discovered on or in the land.

If these findings are sustained by the evidence there can be no doubt that the court properly concluded that judgment should be entered in favor of the defendants.

Apart from any claim based on a mineral location under the laws of the United States, the plaintiff, if in actual possession of the land, was entitled as against every one but the United States, the holder of the paramount title, to retain that possession.

(Harris