30 U.S.C. § 28
Section 28 · Inclusion of certain surveys in labor requirements of mining claims; conditions and restrictions
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case NL Industries, Inc. v. Secretary of Interior of United States (1985)
Most recently applied in 132 Fed. Cl. 77 - Silver Buckle Mines, Inc. v. United States (May 2017)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The term “labor”, as used in the third sentence of section 28 of this title, shall include, without being limited to, geological, geochemical and geophysical surveys conducted by qualified experts and verified by a detailed report filed in the county office in which the claim is located which sets forth fully (a) the location of the work performed in relation to the point of discovery and boundaries of the claim, (b) the nature, extent, and cost thereof, (c) the basic findings therefrom, and (d) the name, address, and professional background of the person or persons conducting the work. Such surveys, however, may not be applied as labor for more than two consecutive years or for more than a total of five years on any one mining claim, and each such survey shall be nonrepetitive of any previous survey on the same claim.