Table Mountain Tunnel Co. v. Stranahan
Before: Cope
Synopsis
Where the Supreme Court, in reversing a judgment and remanding the cause for a new trial, consider and pass upon a point of law, with a view to the new trial for the purposes of which it is important, the ruling upon such point, though not essential to the decision, becomes the law of the case in all its future stages.
Thus, on an appeal from a judgment in favor of defendant in an action to recover a mining claim, the cause was remanded for a new trial on the ground that certain evidence of location offered by the plaintiff had been erroneously excluded and certain mining laws improperly admitted. In an opinion giving its reasons for the decision, the Court discussed the effect of a location in the absence of mining laws, and declared certain principles of law applicable to such locations. On the new trial the lower Court was asked by defendant to give, as an instruction to the jury, a portion of the opinion embracing the declaration of legal principles above referred to, which it refused to do : Held, on a second appeal that the rules of law thus declared in the former opinion, whether intrinsically correct or not, were the law of the case, and that it was therefore error to refuse the instruction.
Cope, J. delivered the opinion of the Court Field, C. J. and Norton, J. concurring.
This case was before us at the April Term, 1862, on appeal from a judgment in favor of the defendants. The judgment was reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial, and the present appeal is from a judgment in favor of the plaintiff. The plaintiff is a mining corporation, and the facts, as elicited at the trial, are not materially different from those stated in our previous opinion.
The point in dispute is the location of a mining claim, and one of the errors assigned is, that the Court refused the following instruction: “ No location of a mining claim can be so extended as to amount to a monopoly, and in the absence of local regulations prescribing a limit, recourse must be had to general usage. If the quantity of ground included be unreasonable, the location will not be effectual for any purpose, and possession under it will only extend to the ground actually occupied. In other words, the extent of the occupancy will determine the extent of the claim, and whether the quantity be unreasonable or not, must depend upon the customs prevailing generally upon the subject.”
This instruction was taken literally from the opinion delivered by us when the case was here before ; and it is difficult for us to understand upon what ground the Court refused to give it. It is too late now to discuss the question of its correctness, for the matter has been adjudicated; and whatever doubts may exist in regard to the conclusion arrived at, it has become the law of the case. The counsel for the plaintiff contends that the point was not involved in the questions raised on the former appeal, and that so much of the language used as limits a location in the case put to the extent of the actual occupation, was mere obiter. It is true, perhaps, that an opinion upon the point was not essential to the decision of the case; but it "was important for the purposes of a new trial; and it [552]was in that view that we considered the matter and passed upon it. It was a matter necessarily involved in the issue to he tried, and the principle of res judicata, is undoubtedly applicable to its determination.
The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial.
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