Sturr v. Beck/Opinion of the Court

by Melville Fuller

United States Supreme Court

133 U.S. 541

Sturr  v.  Beck

With the notice of appeal and appealbond, appellant filed his own affidavit, and that of another, that the ditch and water-right in controversy were reasonably worth $7,500. After the record was filed here a motion was made by appellee to dismiss, accompanied by several affidavits to the effect that such value was far less than $5,000; and upon this motion counter-affidavits have een presented. We have carefully examined all these papers, and conclude that the motion should be overruled. No judgment or decree of the highest court of a territory can be reviewed by this court in matter of fact, but only in matter of law; and we are confined, in this case, to determining whether the court's findings of fact support the judgment. Land Co. v. Bradbury, 132 U.S. 509, ante, 177; 18 St. 27, 28.

John Smith settled on the tract of land described in March, 1877, and continued to reside thereon until he sold and conveyed it by warranty deed to Beck, the appellee. He made his homestead filing or entry March 25, 1879, and his final proof, May 10, 1883, and received a patent from the United States. The waters of False Bottom creek flowed, in its natural channel, over and across Smith's homestead; and in May, 1880, Sturr, the appellant, went upon that homestead, located a water-right thereon, and constructed a ditch which diverted the waters of the creek to his own adjacent land. Beck were into possession under the deed from Smith, and in 1886 notified Sturr to cease diverting the water and maintaining the ditch, and this suit thereupon followed. It is not contended on behalf of Sturr that he is entitled to maintain the ditch because he constructed and used it, or that Smith's acquiescence amounted to anything more than a revocable license. There was no grant, nor an adverse enjoyment, so long continued as to raise a legal presumption of a grant. But it is insisted that the doctrine of prior appropriation of water on the public land, and its beneficial use, protects him from interference, because neither Smith nor Beck made any water-right location, claiming the waters of False Bottom creek, and had never diverted those waters prior to Sturr's location. If, however, Smith obtained a vested right to have the creek flow in its natural channel by virtue of his homestead entry of March 25, 1879, and possession thereunder, or if his patent took effect, as against Sturr, by relation, as of that date, then it is conceded that Sturr cannot prevail, and the judgment must be affirmed.

That the right of a riparian proprietor of land bordering upon a running stream to the benefit to be derived from the flow of its waters is a natural incident to, or one of the elements of, his estate, and that it cannot be lawfully diverted against his consent, is not denied; nor does the controversy relate to the just and reasonable use as between riparian proprietors. The question raised is whether Smith occupied the position of a riparian proprietor, or a prior appropriator, as between himself and Sturr, when the latter undertook to locate his alleged water-right. At that time, Smith had been in possession for three years, and his homestead entry had been made over a year. A claim of the homestead settler, such as Smith's, is initiated by an entry of the land, which is effected by making an application at the proper land-office, filing the affidavit, and paying the amounts required by sections 2238 and 2290 of the Revised Statutes. Under section 2291, the final certificate was not to be given or patent issued 'until the expiration of five years from the date of such entry.' But under the third section of the act of May 14, 1880, c. 89 (21 St. 141,) providing that 'any settler who has settled, or who shall hereafter settle, on any of the public lands of the United States, whether surveyed or unsurveyed, with the intention of claiming the same under the homestead laws, shall be allowed the same time to file his homestead application, and perfect his original entry in the United States land-office, as is now allowed to settlers under the pre-emption laws to put their claims on record, and his right shall relate back to the date of settlement, the same as if he settled under the pre-emption laws,' the ruling of the land department has been that, if the homestead settler shall fully comply with the law as to continuous residence and cultivation, the settlement defeats all claims interveni g between its date and the date of filing his homestead entry, and in making final proof his five years of residence and cultivation will commence from the date of actual settlement. Under section 2297 of the Revised Statutes it is provided that upon change of residence or abandonment, as therein mentioned, before the expiration of the five years, 'then and in that event the land so entered shall revert to the government.' It was held by Attorney General McVeagh, in an opinion to the secretary of war, July 15, 1881, that 'where a homestead entry of public lands has been made by a settler the land so entered cannot, whilst such entry stands, be set apart by the president for a military reservation, even 'prior to the completion of full title in the settler;" that 'upon the entry a right in favor of the settler would seem to attach to the land which is liable to be defeated only by failure on his part to comply with the requirements of the homestead law in regard to settlement and cultivation. This right amounts to an equitable interest in the land, subject to the future performance by the settler of certain conditions, in the event of which he becomes invested with full and complete ownership; and, until forfeited by failure to perform the conditions, it must, I think, prevail, not only against individuals, but against the government.' 1 Land Dec. 59, 60. And many rulings of the interior department sustain this view. These official utterances are entitled to great respect at the hands of this court, as remarked by Mr. Justice LAMAR in Railroad Co. v. Whitney, 132 U.S. 357, 366, ante, 112.

In Witherspoon v. Duncan, 4 Wall. 210, 218, it is said by Mr. Justice DAVIS, speaking for the court, that 'in no just sense can lands be said to be public lands after they have been entered at the land-office, and a certificate of entry obtained. If public lands before the entry, after it they are private property. * * * The contract of purchase is complete when the certificate of entry is executed and delivered, and thereafter the land ceases to be a part of the public domain. The government agrees to make proper conveyance as soon as it can, and in the mean time holds the naked legal fee in trust for the purchaser, who has the equitable title.' It may be said that this language refers to the certificate issued on final proofs; but if the word 'entry,' as applied to appropriations of land, 'means that act by which an individual acquires an inceptive right to a portion of the unappropriated soil of the country, by filing his claim.' (Chotard v. Pope, 12 Wheat. 586, 588,) the principle has a wider scope. In Railroad Co. v. Whitney, ubi supra, an affidavit for the purpose of entering land as a homestead was filed on behalf of one Turner, in a local land-office in minnesota, on May 8, 1865, Turner claiming to act under section 1 of the act of March 21, 1864, (13 St. 35,) now section 2293 of the Revised Statutes of the United States. As a matter of fact, Turner was never on the land, and no member of his family was then residing, or ever did reside, on it; and no improvements whatever had ever been made thereon by any one. Upon being paid their fees, the register and receiver of the land-office allowed the entry; and the same stood upon the records of the local land-office, and upon the records of the general land-office, uncanceled, until September 30, 1872. Between May, 1865, and September, 1872, congress made a grant to the state of Minnesota, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of a railroad from Hastings, through certain counties, to a point on the western boundary of the state, which grant was accepted by the legislature of the state of Minnesota, and transferred to the Hastings & Dakota Railroad Company, which shortly thereafter definitely located its line of road, by filing its map in the office of the commissioner of the general land-office. All these proceedings occurred prior to the 30th of September, 1872. This court declared that the almost uniform practice of the de artment has been to regard land upon which an entry of record, valid upon its face, has been made, as appropriated and with drawn from subsequent homestead entry. pre-emption, settlement, sale, or grant until the original entry be canceled or be declared forfeited, in which case the land reverts to the government as part of the public domain, and becomes again subject to entry under the land laws; and it was held that whatever defects there might be in an entry, so long as it remained a subsisting entry of record, whose legality had been passed upon by the land authorities and their action remained unreversed, it was such an appropriation of the tract as segregated it from the public domain, and therefore precluded it from subsequent grant, and that this entry on behalf of Turner 'attached to the land' in question, within the meaning of the act of congress making the grant, (14 St. 87,) and could not be included within it. And, as to mere settlement, with the intention of obtaining title under the pre-emption laws, while it has been held that no vested right in the land as against the United States is acquired until all the prerequisites for the acquisition of title have been complied with, yet rights in parties as against each other were fully recognized as existing, based upon priority in the initiatory steps, when followed up to a patent. 'The patent which is afterwards issued relates back to the date of the initiatory act, and cuts off all intervening claimants.' Shepley v. Cowan, 91 U.S. 330, 337.

Section 2339 of the Revised Statutes, which is in substance the ninth section of the act of congress of July 26, 1866, (14 St. 253,) provides: 'Whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufacturing, or other purposes have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same; and the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals for the purposes herein specified is acknowledged and confirmed.' This section, said Mr. Justice MILLER, in Broder v. Water Co., 101 U.S. 274, 276, 'was rather a voluntary recognition of a pre-existing right of possession, constituting a valid claim to its continued use, than the establishment of a new one.' By section 17 of the act of July 9, 1870, amendatory of the act of July 26, 1866, it was provided, among other things, that 'all patents granted, or pre-emption or homesteads allowed, shall be subject to any vested and accrued water-rights, or rights to ditches and reservoirs used in connection with such water-rights, as may have been acquired under, or recognized by, the ninth section of the act of which this act is amendatory.' 16 St. 218. And this was carried forward into section 2340 of the Revised Statutes, and Smith's patent was subject to that reservation. The ninth section of the act of 1866 is referred to by Mr. Justice FIELD in Atchison v. Peterson, 20 Wall. 507, 512; and in the opinion it is said that 'the government being the sole proprietor of all the public lands, whether bordering on streams or otherwise, there was no occasion for the application of the common-law doctrine of riparian proprietorship with respect to the waters of those streams.' When, however, the government ceases to be the sole proprietor, the right of the riparian owner attaches, and cannot be subsequently invaded. As the riparian owner has the right to have the water flow ut currere solebat, undiminished except by reasonable consumption of upper proprietors, and no subsequent attempt to take the water only can override the prior appropriation of both land and water, it would seem reasonable that lawful riparian occupancy, with intent to appropriate the land, should have the same effect.

The Dakota Civil Code contains this section: 'Sec. 255. The owner of the land owns water standing thereon, or flowing over or nder its surface, but not forming a definitestream. Water running in a definite stream, formed by nature, over or under the surface, may be used by him as long as it remains there; but he may not prevent the natural flow of the stream, or of the natural spring from which it commences its definite course, nor pursue nor pollute the same.' Levisee, Codes Dak. (2d Ed.) 781. By section 527, which is section 1 of an act relating to water-rights, passed in February, 1881, it is provided: 'Any person or persons, corporation or company, who may have or hold a title or possessory right or title to any mineral or agricultural lands within the limits of this territory, shall be entitled to the usual enjoyment of the waters of the streams or creeks in said territory for mining, milling, agricultural, or domestic purposes: provided, that the right to such use shall not interfere with any prior right or claim to such waters, when the law has been complied with in doing the necessary work.' Id. 861. Section 650, Code Civil Proc., is as follows: 'Any person settled upon the public lands belonging to the United States, on which settlement is not expressly prohibited by congress, or some department of the general government, may maintain an action for any injuries done the same, also an action to recover the possession thereof, in the same manner as if he possessed a fee-simple title to said lands.' Id. 171. The local custom is set forth in the findings to have consisted in the recognition and acknowledgment of 'the right to locate water-rights, and to divert, appropriate, and use the waters of flowing streams for purposes of irrigation when such location, diversion, and use do not conflict or interfere with rights vested and accrued prior thereto. Thus, under the laws of congress and the territory, and under the applicable custom, priority of possession gave priority of right. The question is not as to the extent of Smith's interest in the homestead as against the government, but whether, as against Sturr, his lawful occupancy under settlement and entry was not a prior appropriation which Sturr could not displace. We have no doubt it was, and agree with the brief and comprehensive opinion of the supreme court to that effect. The judgment is affirmed.

Mr. Justice BREWER was not a member of the court when this case was submitted, and took no part in its decision.

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