Teschemacher v. Thompson

Citations

• 18 Cal. 11

Syllabus

<p>Whekb a patent of land was issued by the United States to executors, and an executrix of the last will and testament of one H. in trust for the heirs and devisees of the said H., and the executrix subsequently intermarried with one of the executors : Held, that under the statute of this State the authority of the executrix ceased by her marriage, and that ejectment based upon the patent was properly brought in the name of the executors.</p> <p>By the designation “usual” or “ordinary high water mark,” as' applied to tide waters, is meant the limit reached by the neap tides—that is, those tides which happen between the full and change of the moon twice in every twenty-four hours.</p> <p>By the law of nations, independent of treaty stipulations, the cession of territory from one government to another does not impair the rights of the inhabitants to their property. They retain all such rights, and are entitled to protection in them to the same extent as under the former government. Public property and the sovereignty over the territory are only considered as passing by the cession.</p> <p>When, therefore, California was ceded to the United States, the rights of property of its citizens remained unchanged. By the law of nations, those rights were sacred and inviolable, and the obligation passed to the new government to protect and maintain them. The obligation was political in its character, binding upon the conscience of the new government, and to he executed by proper legislative action, when the requisite protection could not be afforded by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings in the established tribunals, or by existing legislation; and independent of the obligation arising from the law of nations, the United States, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in effect stipulated for the protection of the rights of. property of the inhabitants of the ceded territory.</p> <p>The term property as applied to lands, embraces all titles, legal or equitable, perfect or