Frank and Wanita Melluzzo v. James G. Watt, Secretary of the Interior

The Melluzzos appeal from a summary judgment granted in favor of the Secretary of the Interior, affirming the determination of the Interior Board of Land Appeals (“Board”), in United States v. Melluzzo, 32 IBLA 46 (1977), that the Melluzzos’ six association placer mining claims located for sand, gravel, and building stone were null and void. The Board’s decision was based on both the Melluzos’ lack of a discovery of minerals of marketable value and on their failure to locate their claims prior to the effective date of the Act of July 23,1955, 30 U.S.C. § 611 (which removed common varieties of sand, gravel, and other low-grade substances from location under the mining laws). The Board’s reconsideration of this case resulted from this court’s remand of an earlier determination by the Department of the Interior that the Melluzzos’ claims were invalid. The case was remanded to enable the Board to take into account three Ninth Circuit decisions addressing marketability that were handed down after the Department’s 1969 determination. See Melluzzo v. Morton, 534 F.2d 860, 865 (9th Cir. 1976). In remanding, this court did not preclude the Board from reconsidering whether the Melluzzos had…