Welch v. Sullivan

Citations

• 8 Cal. 165
• 1857 Cal. LEXIS 317

Syllabus

<p>The writ of venditioni exponas is a simple order of the Court to sell property already levied on under execution. It confers no power to levy, and a recital in the return that the sheriff had levied and sold by virtue of the writ is an unimportant error, when it appears that the levy had been previously made under execution.</p> <p>A description, in a sheriff's return, of city lots, by numbers, referring to the official city map, is sufficient.</p> <p>The objection that tho deeds, through which the plaintiff in ejectment deraigns title, are not properly acknowledged, cannot he maintained by one who has no privity with plaintiff's grantors.</p> <p>Under the laws of the Indies, whenever a pueblo was formed by a grant to a founder, or the union of ten or more families, or the foundation of a presidio, or the secularization of a mission, eaeh pueblo was entitled in property to certain tracts of land within the limits of the town to be set apart by them, called commons, pasture-grounds, and municipal lands, by virfcure of their organization as pueblos.</p> <p>The republic of Mexico, after the revolution of 1824, fully recognized the rights of the towns in their commons, pastures, and municipal lands.</p> <p>Whether tho Mexican government retained any power to make grants within the limits of a pueblo, or not, the right of the pueblo to have the municipal and common lands assigned, was an acknowledged equity, charged with which the United States government succeeded to the fee.</p> <p>The act of Congress of 1851 operates as a grant to the pueblos of all lands within their limits, vacant and ungranted, on the seventh of July, 1846.</p> <p>Such a confirmation is higher evidence of title than a patent, because it is a direct grant of the fee, by the sovereign, through the legislative department, while a patent is only a ministerial act.</p> <p>The pueblos, under the laws of Spain and Mexico, had the right to dispose of certain lands within their limits, to defray municipa