Melville Fuller

“ Afterwards, and while the matter was pending, Beebe and others, as was alleged, by some imposition or fraud, procured a patent to be issued to them for the same land. Suit was permitted to be brought in the name of the United States to cancel the Beebe patent, and the defenses relied on in the court below were (1) the want of authority in the attorney general to file a bill for an annulment of a patent in a case like that; (2) that the claim was barred by the statute of limitations; (3) that the claim sued on was stale; (4) that the complainant had no equity to maintain the suit. ”

“ No wrong was chargeable to the state, and if the state and railroad company each claimed the land in good faith upon mere questions of law and fact, without any element of wrong or fraud, it does not appear to us that the bill should be regarded as accomplishing anything more than raising a controversy between the parties actually in interest. ”

“ In the case before us the state of California and its grantees claimed title under the United States, as did the railroad company and its grantees. Either the grantees of the state or the grantees of the railroad had, when the bill was filed, the title to the land. No fraud or imposition or wrong, as against the United States, was charged, and no case made upon which the United States sought relief for themselves. ”

“ Under the laws of California an action may be brought by any person against another, who claims an estate or interest in real property adverse to him for the purpose of determining such adverse claim; but no action can be brought for the recovery of real property, or for possession thereof, or arising out of the title thereto, unless such action is commenced within five years after the cause of action shall have accrued, and an action for relief not otherwise provided for must be commenced within four years. ”

“ If, through erroneous action of its officers, the bounty of the government in the particular instance has not reached those for whom it was intended, but has reached beneficiaries who were not intended to have these particular lands, the government may be relied on to effectuate its own designs, and to make good any moral obligation that rests upon it; but it had not such pecuniary or other interest in this litigation as entitled it to ask the suspension of the beneficent rules applied by the courts in the administration of justice between individuals. ”

“ These principles, so far as they relate to general statutes of limitation, the laches of a party, and the lapse of time, have been rendered familiar to the legal mind by the oft-repeated enunciation and enforcement of them in the decisions of this court. ”

“ Between February 17, 1864, and February 9, 1866, the state had issued its certificates of purchase to the several purchasers thereof, the first payments of the purchase money having been made. The selections, apparently, at their respective dates, were by the register of the land office entered in his office. A portion of these lands were certified over to the state by the land department at Washington, approved by the secretary of the interior on November 15, 1871, and the remainder on March 24, 1873, and they were afterwards patented to the purchasers by the state. ”

“ It was held by this court that the United States could properly proceed, by bill in equity, to have a judicial decree of annulment and an order of cancellation of a patent issued by mistake, or procured by fraud, where the government had a direct interest or was under an obligation respecting the relief sought, but that, in the language of Mr. ”