Smith v. Adsit (83 U.S. 185)

On motion to dismiss, for want of jurisdiction, a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois; the case being thus:

An act of Congress of February 11th, 1847, providing for raising a military force for a limited time, enacted that a bounty in the form of one hundred and sixty acres of land, to be located by the warrantee, should be given to soliders honorably discharged, but provided 'that all sales, mortgages, powers, or other instruments of writing going to affect the title or claim to any such bounty right, made or executed prior to the issue of the warrant or certificate, should be null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.'

With this statute in force Smith filed a bill in one of the inferior State courts of Illinois, against Adsit, Wright, Rourk, and the trustees of schools of township thirty, in range six, in Grundy County, charging that in 1850, by conveyance from one Holmes, he became the owner of certain lands in the county of Grundy, particularly described. The bill averred that Holmes had been a soldier in the Mexican war, that he received a certificate of service and of honorable discharge, entitling him, under the acts of Congress, to a land warrant, and that he applied to Adsit to procure the warrant for him; that Adsit prepared the necessary papers, and at the same time made out a power of attorney for Holmes, authorizing the assignment of the land warrant about to be obtained, with blank spaces for its date, for the number and date of the warrant, and for the name of the attorney, and that he fraudulently induced Holmes to sign it; that this power of attorney was filled up subsequently, and after the land warrant was obtained, with the name of one Hoard as the attorney, with the number and date of the warrant issued (No. 23,129, date August 18th, 1848), and with August 30th, 1848, as the date of the power. The bill further charged that Adsit then procured the attorney to assign the warrant to him, that he located it and obtained for the land a patent in his own name, as assignee of Holmes. It further charged that at the date of the power Holmes was a minor, and that the defendants, Wright, Rourk, and the school trustees, hold the land under conveyances from Adsit, with notice of the plaintiff's rights. It further charged that the power of attorney was a nullity because obtained by fraud, and because of the minority of Holmes; and it averred that if any sale was made by him to Adsit of the land warrant, it was in fact made before the warrant was issued, that it was therefore null by force of the act of Congress, and that consequently Adsit held and located the warrant as a trustee for Holmes, and that the purchasers from him were chargeable with the same trust.

The prayer of the bill was that Adsit might be decreed to have acquired the lands in trust for Holmes; that the other defendants might be decreed to have purchased them, and to hold them charged with the same trust; that an account should be directed, and also a conveyance, to the plaintiff as assignee of Holmes. There was also a prayer for general relief.

The answer of Adsit denied the fraud charged, and averred that he purchased the land warrant from Holmes, without any agreement to act as his agent; and the other defendants set up that they were bon a fide purchasers from Adsit, without notice of any equity in Holmes.

The court in which the bill had been filed entered a decree against Adsit for $6829, and dismissed the bill as to the other defendants. Adsit then appealed to the Supreme Court of the State, where the decree against him was reversed, and the bill dismissed as to him, for want of jurisdiction. From that decree Smith, the complainant, appealed to this court, under an assumption that the case came within the 25th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, or the act of February 5th, 1867, amendatory of it, and that a title, right or privilege under a statute of the United States, had been specially set up and claimed by him and decided against by the Supreme Court of the State.

Mr. George Payson, for the defendant in error, adverting to the fact that the bill had been dismissed as to Adsit, in the Supreme Court, for want of jurisdiction, now moved the court to dismiss the writ in this court, because it nowhere appeared in the record that the decision of the court below was against any statute of the United States specially set up by the complainant, but, on the contrary, that the record, so far as it showed anything, showed that the decree had been based on independent grounds.

Mr. W. T. Burgess, contra, against the dismissal:

The injury sustained springs from the violation of an act of Congress. This act lies at the foundation of the whole case made. The relief must be applied for, in the first instance, in a State court having, under the laws of the State, jurisdiction to grant it, and it has been denied by the Supreme Court of the State when it ought to have been allowed. Now the case at bar upon all these questions is so clearly within the jurisdiction imposed upon this court, that it needs only to be stated to be seen.

Mr. Justice STRONG, having stated the case, delivered the opinion of the court.