Thomas B. Bishop Co. v. Santa Barbara County

The appellant sued in ejectment to recover a parcel of land claimed to have been included in a patent from the United States, granting to its predecessor the Rancho Los Dos Pueblos in Santa Barbara County, California. This appeal was taken from an adverse judgment.

The trial court made findings, including as part of them the patent and the plat of survey of the Rancho. The evidence, aside from the patent and plat, is not before us, and thus the sole question presented is whether the conclusions of law and judgment are supported by the findings. The land involved is a sandspit, asserted by appellees to be part of the public domain. Santa Barbara County claims the sandspit by virtue of a lease granted by the Department of Interior pursuant to an act of Congress entitled “An Act To enable the board of supervisors of Santa Barbara County to maintain a free public bathing beach on certain public land.” Public 92, 69th Congress, Act April 5, 1926, 44 Stat. 235 .

Originally the Rancho Los Dos Pueblos was the subject of a Mexican grant, dated 1842, and approved by the Departmental Assembly three years later. In 1853 the claimant, one Nicholas A. Den, presented a petition for…

On Petitions for Rehearing.

Appellees have petitioned for a rehearing, insisting earnestly that we have disregarded the findings of the trial court. Particularly is it insisted that we have ignored the finding that station DP 2 is a corner or turning point of the survey, marking the easterly limit of the grant.

The petitions display an apparent misunderstanding of what was held. Course 18 (as well as all previous courses from the point of commencement to station DP 2) was found by the trial court to be, not a line of boundary, but a meander of the shore of the ocean. Course 19 (“along Estero on top of bluff”) was found to be, not a line of boundary, but a meander of the shore of the Estero. These two traverse lines are the only ones material to the controversy, and they are controlling. Since both were found to be, not boundaries, but meanders of the sea and the Estero, the conclusion is inescapable that one or the other, or both, were intended to meander the sandspit. The conclusion of law reached below, that the boundary at this place was the foot of the bluffs along the westerly terminus of the sandspit, we believed to be without support in reason or authority and plainly in…