Henry Billings Brown

“ The substance of these authorities is that wherever a person obtains the legal title to land by any artifice or concealment, or by making use of facilities intended for the benefit of another, a court of equity will impress upon the lands so held by him a trust in favor of the party who is justly entitled to them, and will order the trust executed by decreeing their conveyance to the party in whose favor the trust was created. ”

“ Rep. 517, it was held that a person who had obtained a patent to lands which the patentee knew he had no right to claim took the legal title subject to the superior equities of the rightful owner. In delivering the opinion, Chief Justice WAITE said: 'The holder of a legal title in bad faith must always yield to a superior equity. As against the United States, his title may be good, but not as against one who had acquired a prior right from the United States, in force when his purchase was made under which his patent issued. ”

“ There must be an intent to convey, and the delivery of a deed for the purpose of vesting a present title in the grantee, and a deed delivered without the consent of the grantor is of no more effect to pass title than if it were a forgery. ”

“ Justice DAVIS in the Case of the Kansas Indians, 5 Wall. 758, that 'the conduct of Indians is not to be measured by the same standard which we apply to the conduct of other people.' But their very analogy to persons under guardianship suggests a limitation to their pupilage, since the utmost term of disability of an infant is but 21 years, and it is very rare that the relations of guardian and ward under any circumstances, even those of lunacy, are maintained for a longer period than this. ”

“ Certainly, if they were not entitled to the lands themselves, they would be entitled to recover of Patrick what he had received for them. Waiving this question, however, it is scarcely within the bounds of possibility to suppose that Sophia Felix, if she had located this scrip, would have realized a tithe of the sum her heirs now demand of this defendant. ”

“ Whether Patrick located this scrip and took these lands under the blank power of attorney and deed, as trustee for Sophia Felix; and (2) whether the plaintiffs are estopped by their own laches and those of Sophia Felix from insisting that Patrick shall be decreed to hold the lands for their benefit. ”