CORINNE MILL CANAL AND STOCK COMPANY
v.
JOHNSON
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A railroad company sought to recover land it claimed under a federal land grant, but the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's judgment against it because the company failed to prove that the disputed tracts were not among the lands expressly excepted from the grant. The Court held that when the complete record of testimony is not preserved on appeal, it cannot assume the plaintiff proved its title, and that the burden rests on the grant recipient to affirmatively demonstrate the lands were not excepted from the grant.
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Mr. Justice Brewer,
after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
The grant to the railroad company was not of all the odd-numbered sections within twenty miles of its line of definite location, but of those sections subject to certain exceptions. Proof that the road had been located and completed and that the tracts claimed were odd-numbered sections within the twenty-mile limit, was not sufficient to establish title in the company. The evidence must go further, and the burden was on the plaintiff to show that they were not of the lands excepted. Maxwell Land Grant Co. v. Dawson, 151 U. S. 586.
Now the defect in this record which is fatal to the case of the plaintiff in error is that nowhere is it shown that all the testimony received on the trial is preserved. Under such circumstances we are not at liberty to assume that there was in evidence a patent, or other instrument of itself working a transfer of the legal title from the government to the railroad company, or evidence of any character removing all doubt as to the matter of exceptions, nor, on the other hand, that there was not testimony which conclusively established the existence of some one or more of those exceptions.
Take for illustration the question whether these were min-, eral lands. The grant in terms excepted such lands from its operation. There was no evidence of any adjudication by the Land Department, either through the issue of a patent or otherwise, that they were non-mineral lands. Barden v. Northern Pacific Railroad, 154.U. S. 288. While there was on the part of the plaintiff some testimony of a general character tending to show that the lands were grazing lands, and that no mineral had ever been discovered. in them, yet for aüght that appears, there may have been overwhelming evidence that mines had in fact been opened and worked in them, or that there had been an express adjudication by the Land Department that they were mineral lands and excepted from the grant. And,so of other exceptions. The presumptions are all in favor of the rulings of the trial court. And before it can be adjudged that it erred in instructing that the plaintiff had failed in its proof of title, the record must affirmatively show that the title was in fact proved, and that, as we have seen, includes proof that the lands were not within the exceptions named in the statute.
The Supreme Court of the Territory, whose judgment we are reviewing, did not err in refusing upon such a record to disturb the decision of the trial court that the plaintiff had not established its title to the land. The judgment is, therefore,
Affirmed.
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Toltec Ranch Co. v. Cook, 191 U.S. 532 (U.S. 1903)
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Life & Cas. Ins. Co. v. City OF Florala, 63 F.2d 195 (5th Cir. 1933)…it is to be presumed that there was such evidence. It follows that the record does not show that the court erred in so finding. Kneeland v. Luce, 141 U. S. 437, 12 S. Ct. 39, 35 L. Ed. 808; Corrine Mill, Canal & Stock Co. v. Johnson, 150 U. S. 574, 15 S. Ct. 409, 39 L. Ed. 537. While the ruling now under consideration is not a ground of reversal at the instance of the appellant, the part of the decree dealing with the subject of that ruling is substantially defective for lack of certainty and inconsistency…
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Howard v. Perrin, 200 U.S. 71 (U.S. 1906)…considered in Barden v. Northern Pacific Railroad, 154 U. S. 288, it appears from the opinion of the majority in the latter case that there was no intention to disturb the former [*74] ruling. Neither is there anything in Corinne Company v. Johnson, 156 U. S. 574, to the contrary. In that case a judgment of the Supreme Court of Utah against a grantee of the railroad company was affirmed, but it was affirmed on the ground that the record did not purport to contain all the evidence, and, under those circumstan…
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- Maxwell Land Grant Co. v. Dawson, 151 U.S. 586 (U.S. 1894)