Pedro Chaboya obtained in this court, at its December Term, 1862, the confirmation of his title to five hundred acres of land under claim of a grant of the Mexican government. 2 Black, 593. The proceeding was commenced before the board of land commissioners under the act of 1851, and they decided against him. On appeal to the District Court, it was found that the land was misdescribed in his petition to the board; and that court held that it had no jurisdiction on appeal to confirm any other land than that mentioned in the petition. An act of Congress, passed to remedy this defect, authorized the District Court to hear and decide his claim to the land known as La Posa San Juan Bautista. 12 Stat. 902.
This claim was for about two leagues. The District Court confirmed his claim to five hundred acres, part of the tract known as La Posa de San Juan Bautista, and rejected the remainder of it. On cross-appeals, by the United States and by Chaboya, the decree of the District Court was affirmed.
Chaboya having parted with the title thus confirmed to him, but retaining possession of the property, the present defendants in error, in whom that title had become vested, instituted a suit against him and others in the proper State court of California to obtain possession of the land.
In this action they were successful; and Chaboya and his codefendants having carried the case to the Supreme Court of California without success, have brought it here by writ of error to that court.
The title relied on by Chaboya as a defence to the action was a decree of the District Court of the United States for the Western District of California, rendered in pursuance of a mandate of this court on the thirteenth day of June, 1866. The rejection of a properly certified copy of this decree by the court when offered in evidence by plaintiffs in error is one, if not the only, error to be considered here.
The case in which that decree was rendered originated in a petition of the mayor and council of the city of San Jos e to the board of commissioners already mentioned, for the confirmation of the title of said city as the successor to the Mexican pueblo of that name, to certain lands or commons belonging to the pueblo. The out-boundary of this decree, as finally settled by the Supreme Court, included the land now in controversy, which was then, as it had been for a long time before, in the possession of Chaboya and his family.
That decree, however, excepted from this confirmation certain specified ranchos, 'and also such other parcels of land as have been, by grants from lawful authority, vested in private proprietorship, and have been finally confirmed to parties claiming under said grants by the tribunals of the United States, or shall hereafter be finally confirmed to parties claiming thereunder by said tribunals, in proceedings now pending therein for that purpose; all of which said excepted parcels of land are included in whole or in part within the boundaries above mentioned, but are excluded from the confirmation to the mayor and common council of the city of San Jos e.'
As Pedro Chaboya had set up a grant from the Mexican authorities of this five hundred acres, and as it had been confirmed to him by the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest tribunal to whom such questions could be submitted, it would seem that it was excluded from the confirmation of the pueblo title, and that the court was right in rejecting the decree as evidence of title to that land. On the face of the matter, as thus stated, the court was clearly right.
But it is said in opposition to this view of the matter, that the District Court, when it confirmed the title of Chaboya, was acting upon a matter wholly beyond its jurisdiction; that its decree was therefore void; and that grants not vested in private proprietorship by lawful authority, and not confirmed by tribunals authorized to do so, are not among those excluded from confirmation by the decree in the San Jos e case.