Lyle v. Patterson

Citations

• 228 U.S. 211
• 33 S. Ct. 480
• 57 L. Ed. 804
• 1913 U.S. LEXIS 2366

Syllabus

<p>Quaere, whether the benefits of the act of March 3,1887, providing for settlement of titles of purchasers in good faith from railroad companies not entitled to convey, are confined exclusively to those who purchased prior to that date.</p> <p>One suing to make a patentee trustee for himself can only recover on the strength of his own equity and not on the defects in defendant’s title.</p> <p>A possessory title to lands of the public domain acquired in good faith from a railroad company afterwards held not to have earned the land, by a purchaser who cultivated and improved the property, is good as against all except the United States, and an attempted entry by another before the land is restored to the public domain and reopened for entry is a trespass and initiates no rights in the property.</p> <p>Possession, not based on a legal right but secured by violence and maintained with force and arms, cannot furnish the basis of a right enforceable in law.</p> <p>A preemption right cannot be initiated without settlement, habitation and improvement, Homer v, Wallace, 97 U. S. 579, and the same rule applies to a homestead entry. Neither right can be initiated when the land is in possession of another under color of title.</p> <p>A naked unlawful trespass cannot initiate a right to any part of the public domain. Swanson v. Sears, 224 U. S. 182.</p>