Stutsman

This is a suit brought by the assignee of the locators of a placer claim upon supposedly public lands to quiet the title thereto, cancel a patent issued by the state of California to defendants’ grantor, and for an accounting for gas and petroleum extracted by defendants. The lands affected are very valuable oil properties situate in the Fullerton oil fields. Defendants have moved to dismiss.

Originally the land was a part of the public domain, and was in 1868 listed, and thereby conveyed, to the state of California, as land in lieu of a certain thirty-sixth section given to the state under general grant for school purposes. The acts of Congress specially providing for, or relating to, such grant and listing to the state are indicated in the margin. 1

Without going into 'the details of the matters set out in the bill of complaint, it may be said that plaintiff, whose assignors made their entry, location, and discovery on the land in question in 1913, complains that the land in 1868, at the time of its listing to the state, was mineral land, and was known to be such by the applicant therefor and *527 by the United States surveyor general for California, to whom the application…