OCR Text |
Show GIVES STATE TITLE TO MIHEHAL LANDS DECISION WILL HAVE FAR-REACHING FAR-REACHING EFFECT IN OIL PRODUCING TERRITORIES. High Tribunal Overrules Court of Appeals and Commissioner of General Land Office Regsrd-ing Regsrd-ing Rights of State. Washington. The supreme court on March LIS rendered a far-reaching opinion in the case of the state of Wyoming versus the United States. In which the supreme court overruled not only the circuit court of appeals, but the secretary of the interior and the commissioner of the general land office and held that when a state properly and completely makes a lieu selection the rights of the state cannot can-not be overturned hy a subsequent showing that the land in question is mineral in character. The decision is important particularly in oil producing produc-ing regions. The stale of Wyoming in 11)12 re-1 re-1 in cjiiis.li ol to the government .some of its school land which had been included includ-ed in a forest reserve aud in lieu selected se-lected other public land outside the forest reserve, including the land involved in-volved in .the suit. Notice of the state's selection was regularly published pub-lished and the state did everything required re-quired hy law. No objection was raised to the state's selection and the list was duly approved and transmitted to the general gen-eral land office by the local land office of-fice in 1912. The list remained in the general land office for, more than three years. Meantime, in 1914, two years after the state made it selection, selec-tion, the selected land, with S8.000 acres of other land, was temporarily withdrawn as possible oil laud and the following year the commissioner of the land office declined to approve the state list, called on the state either to accept a surface right or to show positively that 'the land was still not known or believed to be mineral. ' The state declined and insisted that its rights should be determined as of the time when the selection had been made. The commissioner of the land office therefore canceled the selection because of the oil discoveries made in that vicinity after the state's selection selec-tion had been filed. The secretary of the Interior affirmed the ruling of the commissioner. In the meantime, the state had leased this land and the laud was subsequently sub-sequently developed by an oil company com-pany under assignment. There was no discovery of oil, however, until after the lease was made, or four years after the selection. Tlie effect of this decision will be to overturn many rulings of the interior in-terior department where the department depart-ment has undertaken to defeat lieu selections which embrace- lands not known to contain oil or mineral at the time they were selected, but wiiich were found or were supposed to be valuable for oil after the date of selection, se-lection, but before the selection was passed upon by the secretary of interior. in-terior. In this particular case the district court for Wyoming had ruled in. favor of the state of Wyoming and had been reversed by the circuit court of appeals. ap-peals. The supreme court upholds the contention of the state and the decision of the district court. |