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21 Cal. 552

Mahoney v. Van Winkle

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1863

California Supreme Court · decided 1863-07-01

In 1835, José Antonio Galindo petitioned the proper Mexican authority for a concession of a tract of land called the “ Laguna de la Merced,” situated within the limits of the present counties of San Francisco and San Mateo. In his petition he stated that the tract .solicited was a league in length and half a league in width, more or less, and referred to an accompanying map as showing the boundaries.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1863-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 24 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1963

1 district · 21 state decisions

10018631870188018901900191019201930194019501960decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Norton J.

¶1The usual form of Mexican grants in California is for a certain tract of land called by a particular name, having boundaries which are designated and also shown on a map, and stating that the land granted contains a specified quantity, a little more or less; that juridical measurement must be made, and that the surplus will remain to the nation.

¶2The Supreme Court of the United States have decided that such grants convey only the quantity named, and not the whole of the tract described, in case such tract exceeds in extent the quantity named.

¶3Under these circumstances, a question arises whether, before a juridical survey, such a grant conveys a title to the whole of the land within the designated boundaries upon which an action of ejectment can be maintained, or whether it merely conveys a right to have a particular portion laid off within those boundaries, and which right until such survey is but an equity, and not a legal title sufficient to sustain an action of ejectment for any particular portion.

¶4That such a grant conveys a title upon which an action of ejectment may be maintained, for at least the quantity specified, has been several times decided by this Court, and I think must be considered as settled, so far as the question'depends upon the judgments of the State Courts.

¶5This point being established controls the case. If, before a juridical survey, the grantee can recover any particular portion, he can recover the whole.

¶6•The point urged by the defendants, that the plaintiff, or those under whom he claims, have limited their right of recovery to a particular portion by a temporary selection, cannot be sustained on the facts in this case, for the reasons given in the opinion of the Court, if such a consequence could ever result from the acts of the grantee before a final survey.

¶7The judgment should therefore be affirmed.

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