Lathrop v. Mills

Citations

• 19 Cal. 513

Syllabus

<p>That part of the eleventh section of the Act of 1856, (Stat. 1856, 56) “For the Protection of Actual Settlers and to Quiet Land Titles,” which declares that a suit on a patent shall be brought within two years irom the date of the patent, is unconstitutional. The general provisions of the act being conceded to be unconstitutional, this particular clause also falls, because it is not an independent provision, constitutional in itself, and capable of enforcement without reference to the body of the act.</p> <p>If, in an act nnconstitntional in its main features, there be found a provision which is constitutional, that provision may he carried out, provided it be entirely disconnected from the vicious portions of the act; and the Legislature is presumed to intend that notwithstanding the invalidity of the other portions of the act, still this particular provision shall stand. The saving of the particular provision, even when not upon its face unconstitutional, is matter of legislative intent.</p> <p>The whole Act of 1856 in question absolutely ignores Mexican grants, and is unconstitutional. Such grants are titles within the full protection, not only of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, hut of the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of California.</p> <p>This act discussed.</p> <p>Many Mexican grants are legal titles, and most of them are, when united to possession, such equitable titles as are entitled to protection and give a right to a possessory action.</p> <p>Whether the Legislature has any power to discriminate, by special or general law, between holders of one class or description of legal titles and the holders of another class or description; to say, for example, that A’s claim to his estate shall he governed by one set of rules and B's by another; that a Mexican title shall be, though of the same grade, governed by one Statute of Limitation, and an American title, in law of no higher dignity, shall be governed by another; an