Robert Cooper Grier

“ How can he call on the plaintiffs to prove how much he claims, or the jury to find a separate verdict as to his separate holding, when he will neither by his pleading nor evidence signify how much he claims? This was a fact known only to himself, and one with which the plaintiff had no concern and the jury no knowledge. If a general verdict leaves each one liable for all the costs, it is a necessary consequence of their own conduct, and no one has a right to complain. ”

“ Coppinger's grant can claim only what is left after satisfying Las Pulgas, which calls for a certain quantity and a certain boundary. There was no offer to prove that the survey of Las Pulgas was extended beyond such limit.
The court below refused to admit the testimony, not for its irrelevancy, but its incompetency; because the defendants, claiming under a merely equitable title, having neither survey nor patent, were not in a condition to dispute in a court of law the correctness of the survey made by the public officer or resist the plaintiff's perfect legal title. ”

“ The hybrid mixture of civil and common-law pleadings and practice introduced by State codes cannot be transplanted into the courts of the United States.
In the action of ejectment, a plaintiff will not be allowed to join in one suit several and distinct parcels, tenements, or tracts of land, in possession of several defendants, each claiming for himself. But he is not bound to bring a separate action against several trespassers on his single, separate, and distinct tenement or parcel of land. As to him they are all trespassers, and he cannot know how they claim, whether jointly or severally ”