United States v. Claude S. Gossett Et Ux., United States of America v. Charles D. Williams

Before us for review is the action of the District Court in granting summary judgments to plaintiff. Discovery procedures, including affidavits and interrogatories, were extensively employed. We affirm.

Involved is the title and right to possession of lands located in California, west of the present flow of the Colorado River. The runaway waters of this once unpredictable and highly destructive river have left in their wake a substantial body of law. For example, Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546 , 83 S.Ct. 1468 , 10 L.Ed.2d 542 (1963); United States v. Arizona, 295 U.S. 174 , 55 S.Ct. 666 , 79 L.Ed. 1371 (1935); Arizona v. California, 298 U.S. 558 , 56 S.Ct. 848 , 80 L.Ed. 1331 (1936). The river’s catastrophic force was harnessed and its channel stabilized in 1935 by the completion of giant Hoover Dam.

The lands here under scrutiny were ceded to the United States by Mexico in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 9 Stat. 922 . The river in the area with which we are concerned is navigable, but non-tidal. California was admitted to the Union in 1850 and thereby acquired ownership of the bed of the river, west of the middle of the channel. The land claimed by the Gossetts is…