People v. Southern Pac. R.R. Co.

The appeals are from the judgment and from an order denying a motion for a new trial.

This is one of the series of cases mentioned in the opinion in L. A. No. 3060, entitled the People v. California Fish Co., ante, p. 576, [ 138 Pac. 79 .] The present case involves tide land location No. 69. The application and survey therefor were filed on December 23, 1878, payment was made on July 16, 1883, and the patent was issued on August 4, 1883, to William L. Banning. The land embraces a strip of tide land extending along the water-front of San Pedro occupied by the defendant railroad companies by its railroad tracks and wharves. All of this strip lying north of the prolongation of the center line of Fourth Street in San Pedro lies within two miles of the corporate limits of the town of Wilmington as incorporated by the act of 1872. The remainder thereof is beyond said limits. The law governing the case is the same as that stated in the aforesaid opinion in L. A. No. 3060, and we refer to that opinion for the discussion thereof. The land within the two-mile limit was withheld from" sale at the time this patent was issued, and Banning obtained no title thereto by his patent. With respect…

I agree in the main with the concurring opinion of the chief justice. I differ from the views expressed in the prevailing opinion, and perhaps from the views expressed by the chief justice over the question of the title taken by private owners under grants authorized by and made under the Tide Lands Act. .So far as those grants were made after the effective date of section 2 of article XV of our constitution, no difficulty is presented. All such grants were taken subject to the restrictions and limitations of the constitution, and it is sufficient in the ease at bar to direct the trial court to enter its decree so declaring, without here attempting to define the scope of those constitutional limitations before argument and in advance of a full presentation of the questions.

But upon the title taken under such grants made before the operative date of section 2 of article XV, my views differ radically from those expressed in the prevailing opinion, and while, by virtue of the fact that practically all of the lands here involved were acquired subsequent to the constitutional provision, the question is of no consequence in the present eases, yet as the court has unnecessarily gone…

I concur in the judgment of reversal, and in the reasons fully set forth in the,opinion of Justice Shaw in L. A. No. 3060, ante, p. 576, upon which the present judgment is based. It would be sufficient, I think, in remanding the cause for further proceedings to direct the superior court to quiet the title of the state to so much of the land described in the Banning patent as lies within the two-mile limit of the town of Wilmington as originally incorporated, and to quiet the title of the successors of Banning to the remaining portion of the land so described against all claims of the state except the rights reserved to the public by section 2 of article XV of the constitution. The case presented by the record does not, in my opinion, call for any elaborate discussion, or exact definition of the full extent of those rights, but since my associates have gone so fully into those questions I take occasion to state briefly my own views as to the effect of a valid conveyance of a portion of our tide lands, and to define, as well as I can, what, in my opinion, is the interest acquired by the patentee and what the nature and extent of the rights reserved to the state.

To this end it will…