Juanita B. Mulkern, Individually and as the Widow and Successor in Interest of G. C. (Tom) Mulkern v. Harold C. Hammitt, Etc.

This suit was filed by G. C. Mulkern, to whose interest the appellant Juanita Mulkern has succeeded, to enjoin the appellee, Hammitt, who is the Manager of the Nevada Land Office, Bureau of Land Management of the United States Department of the Interior, from cancelling the appellant’s placer mining claims for gypsum and sand on public lands of the United States in Nevada. The United States District Court denied the injunction, and this appeal was brought.

The claims which are the subject of this suit were located by the appellant’s predecessor in title on December 23, 1922, at which time the land here in question was open for such a location. The claims were not exploited by any commercial mining of the gypsum or sand, by G. C. Mulkem’s predecessor, from 1922 to 1941 when G. C. Mulkern became the owner of the claims, nor did G. C. Mulkern thereafter exploit the claims. In 1944 the United States filed proceedings the purpose of which was to nullify the claims. This proceeding was, for reasons not here relevant, delayed, and the hearing which resulted in the departmental decision here in question was not held until 1957. The question at issue in the hearing was whether a valid…