Carl Beistline v. City of San Diego and General Dynamics Corporation

Plaintiff-appellant sued in 1957 to rescind the sale made by him to the City of San Diego in 1947 of eighty-two acres of land located on Kearney Mesa in the said City of San Diego, California, or, in the alternative, for an accounting of profits. Plaintiff voluntarily sold the property, but only after the City of San Diego had filed a suit to condemn the property for use as a municipal airport. Nine years later, in 1956, the City of San Diego is alleged to have sold the same land to defendant General Dynamics Corporation at a considerable profit. Plaintiff charges in his first cause of action that the representations made to him by the City of San Diego concerning the intended use of the property “were entirely false and untrue,” and that the corporate defendant knew they were untrue; in his second cause of action that the condemnation suit constituted compulsion and duress. Plaintiff sought to base jurisdiction in the United States courts on the presence of a substantial federal question. 28 U.S.C. § 1331 .

Each defendant moved to dismiss upon the ground of lack of jurisdiction, i. e., that no substantial federal question was involved. Each such motion was granted. Plaintiff was…