United States v. Whited & Wheless, Ltd.

Headnotes

1. Environmental Law — Federal Practice — Appellate Jurisdiction The Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review, on error to the circuit court of appeals, a judgment of that court affirming a demurrer sustained by the district court to a petition seeking to recover from the liquidating commissioners and former president of a dissolved corporation the value of public lands described in a patent alleged to have been procured from the Government by the fraudulent conduct of the company and its president. 246 U.S. 552, 553
2. Federal Courts & Jurisdiction — Jurisdiction to Consider Arguments Not Reached Below Where the circuit court of appeals rests its decision wholly upon a statute of limitations, the Supreme Court may nonetheless consider, under warrant of a claim in the demurrer that the petition does not state a cause of action, the further argument that any recovery by the Government is limited by statute. 246 U.S. at 561
3. Statutory Interpretation — Public Lands — Patent Titles The provision of the Act of March 3, 1891, § 8, 26 Stat. 1099, that suits by the United States to vacate and annul patents thereafter issued shall only be brought within six years after the date of issuance, was designed for the security of patent titles and does not apply to an action at law to recover the value of patented land as damages for deceit practiced by the defendant in procuring the patent. 246 U.S. at 554, 559-560
4. Statutory Interpretation — Government Actions — Presumption of Non-Binding Effect The United States, asserting rights vested in them as a sovereign government, are not bound by any statute of limitations unless Congress has clearly manifested its intention that they should be so bound, and such statutes, when urged to bar the rights of the Government, require a restrictive and strict rather than a liberal construction. 246 U.S. at 559 (quoting United States v. Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. Co., 118 U.S. at 125)
5. Statutory Interpretation — Government Actions — Fraudulently Procured Patents A statutory bar of the Government's suit to annul a fraudulently procured patent operates only upon that remedy and does not bar a suit to recover the value of the land, because the Government's right asserted in the damages action springs from the fraud in obtaining the patent, not from the patent itself; the omission from the limitation act of language barring recovery of the value of lands to which a patent was fraudulently obtained was intentional and deliberate, so that patent titles might be made secure while persons who defrauded the Government are not protected by the act in the enjoyment of their ill-gotten gains. 246 U.S. at 558-561
6. Remedies — Election Between Remedies Where there are two remedies for the protection of the same right, one may be barred by limitation and the other not; an injured party who has a right to either of two actions is not barred in the one he chooses because the other, had he brought it, might have been barred. 246 U.S. at 561 (citing Lamb v. Clark, 5 Pick. 193, 198)
7. Environmental Law — Measure of Recovery — Erroneously Patented Lands The provision of § 2 of the Act of March 2, 1896, 29 Stat. 42, limiting the Government's money recovery to the minimum government price when patents have been erroneously issued under a railroad or wagon road grant and the lands have been sold to bona fide purchasers, applies only to patents erroneously issued under such a grant and does not apply to a case in which the Government seeks money damages because of deceit practiced in procuring a patent under the Homestead Law. 246 U.S. at 561-562