Hopkins v. Walker

Citations

• 244 U.S. 486
• 37 S. Ct. 711
• 61 L. Ed. 1270
• 1917 U.S. LEXIS 1658

Syllabus

<p>A case arises under the laws of the United States where an appropriate statement of the plaintiff’s cause of action, unaided by any anticipation or avoidance of defenses, discloses that it really and substantially involves a controversy respecting the validity, construction or effect of a law of Congress.</p> <p>A substantial controversy respecting the construction and effect of the mining laws is presented by a case in which the plaintiff sets up title under a placer patent, alleging that the locus in quo was not known to contain lodes when the patent was applied for and was so adjudged against strangers to the suit who adversed the application, and in ' which the defendants, notwithstanding such judgments, claim the same ground under other lode locations made after the patent and embracing claims of the width of 600 feet, while plaintiff contends 25 feet would be the maximum if the ground remained subject to lode location.</p> <p>In a suit to remove a particular cloud from the plaintiff’s title, the facts showing that title and the existence and invalidity of the instrument or record sought to be eliminated as a cloud are essential parts of the plaintiff’s cause of action and must be alleged in the bill.</p> <p>The rule is the same in respect of suits to remove clouds under § 6115 of the Montana Codes of 1907, as distinguished from suits to'quiet title under § 6870.</p> <p>Recorded certificates of location are the first muniment of the locator’s paper title and, when verified, are, in Montana, made prima fade evidence of all facts properly recited in them (Codes 1907, §§ 2284, 2285); and so, when apparently valid but actually, under the mining laws, invalid,, they may becloud the title injuriously.</p>