Copper Hill Mining Co. v. Spencer

By the Court, Sawyer, J. This is an appeal from a judgment of nonsuit and. the order denying a new trial. The suit was brought to recover six hundred feet of mining ground. The evidence of the plaintiff shows that a party of miners, on or about the 1st of June, 1861, located, in the usual mode, three thousand feet or more in length on a copper ledge, and commenced the work of developing the mine; that from the 7th to the 10th of June— certainly as early as the 10th—the defendants also located, by putting up notices and immediately commencing work upon [24]it, that portion of the same lode now in controversy, and that they have ever since been in possession, claiming it under said location; that on the 26th of the same month the locators first named and their assigns, in pursuance of the statutes of California, organized themselves into a corporation under the name of the Copper Hill Mining Company, the present plaintiff; that the said parties then, to use their own phrase, “ surrendered their claim to the corporation,” and took stock in lieu of it. The language of all the witnesses on this point is nearly identical, and the following testimony of Mr. Brown will serve to express in the language of the witnesses all that was said in regard to the transfer of the title to the plaintiff: “ I surrendered all my interests and those I was representing in and to said claim to corporation, Copper Hill Mining Company, plaintiff, and took certificates of stock in lieu. There were no deeds of this claim made to the corporation by any of the owners.” The following is also stated in the records as an admission by plaintiff: “ Plaintiff here admitted that no deeds or conveyances in writing were made to the corporation by any of the owners or" holders of said mining claim; that all rights, claim, and possession of, in, and to said mining ground, whatever the same might be, are surrendered and given up to the company and merged in said corporation, such owners receiving from corporation certificates of stock according to the amount so surrendered.” The foregoing facts and testimony, together with subsequent work and other acts of possession and ownership, on behalf of the corporation, on portions of the claim outside of the ground in dispute, constitute the evidence of title upon which plaintiff relied for a recovery.

The appellant claims that under the decision in Table Mountain Tunnel Company v. Stranahan, 20 Cal. 198, the evidence establishes a title sufficient to authorize a recovery. We think the principle announced in that case not applicable to the one under consideration. In the former case, the corporation had acquired the possession of the locators to the entire claim, and the defendants subsequently entered upon