Fothergill's Lessee v. Stover

Last updated April 02, 2019

Lessee of Fothergill v. Fothergill, 1 U.S. 6 (1763) is a decision of the Pennsylvania Provincial Supreme Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports .

Case citation a system for uniquely identifying individual rulings of a court

Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System. It also claims to be the oldest appellate court in the United States, a claim that is disputed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania began in 1684 as the Provincial Court, and casual references to it as the "Supreme Court" of Pennsylvania were made official in 1722 upon its reorganization as an entity separate from the control of the royal governor. Today, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania maintains a discretionary docket, meaning that the Court may choose which cases it accepts, with the exception of mandatory death penalty appeals, and certain appeals from the original jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Court. This discretion allows the Court to wield powerful influence on the formation and interpretation of Pennsylvania law.

Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.

Colonial and early state court cases in the United States Reports

None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and most of the second volume of the United States Reports are actually decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts, dating from the colonial period and the first decade after independence. Alexander Dallas, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania lawyer and journalist, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume, which he called Reports of cases ruled and adjudged in the courts of Pennsylvania, before and since the Revolution.^[1] This would come to be known as the first volume of Dallas Reports.

<i>United States Reports</i> official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States

The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. United States Reports, once printed and bound, are the final version of court opinions and cannot be changed. Opinions of the court in each case are prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Publishing Office.

Alexander J. Dallas (statesman) 6th United States Secretary of the Treasury

Alexander James Dallas was an American statesman who served as the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President James Madison.

When the United States Supreme Court, along with the rest of the new Federal Government, moved in 1791 to the nation’s temporary capital in Philadelphia, Dallas was appointed the Supreme Court’s first unofficial and unpaid Supreme Court Reporter. (Court reporters in that age received no salary, but were expected to profit from the publication and sale of their compiled decisions.) Dallas continued to collect and publish Pennsylvania decisions in a second volume of his Reports, and when the Supreme Court began hearing cases, he added those cases to his reports, starting towards the end of the second volume, 2 Dallas Reports. Dallas would go on to publish a total of 4 volumes of decisions during his tenure as Reporter.

The Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States is the official charged with editing and publishing the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States, both when announced and when they are published in permanent bound volumes of the United States Reports. The Reporter of Decisions is responsible for only the contents of the United States Reports issued by the Government Printing Office, first in preliminary prints and later in the final bound volumes. The Reporter is not responsible for the editorial content of unofficial reports of the Court's decisions, such as the privately published Supreme Court Reporter or Lawyers' Edition.

In 1874, the U.S. government created the United States Reports, and numbered the volumes previously published privately as part of that series, starting from the first volume of Dallas Reports. The four volumes Dallas published were retitled volumes 1 - 4 of United States Reports .^[2] As a result, the complete citation to Lessee of Fothergill v. Stover is 1 U.S. 6 (1 Dallas 6) (1763).

The decision

Lessee of Fothergill v. Stover involved a dispute over title to land. The issue before the Court was whether an order, written in 1719 by James Steel, the Receiver General and Secretary of the Land Office, addressed to Isaac Taylor, the Surveyor General’s Deputy in Chester County, stating that James Logan, one of three Proprietors or Commissioners of Land in the Pennsylvania Territory had granted 500 acres (2.0 km²) of land to William Willis, and directing that Willis’s land be surveyed so a warrant could be issued, was admissible as evidence of title.

A land grant is a grant of land – held by a government to hold until the land it granted to a person. The United States historically gave out numerous land grants to people desiring farmland. The American Industrial Revolution was guided by many supportive acts of legislatures promoting commerce or transportation infrastructure development by private companies, such as the Cumberland Road turnpike, the Lehigh Canal, the Schuylkill Canal, and the many railroads that tied the young United States together.

The plaintiff, who appears to have claimed the same land through a warrant and survey issued some years later, opposed admission of the order, arguing that the survey order alone, without an actual warrant issued by the Proprietors or Commissioners of Property, was not sufficient to endow Willis with title to the land, nor to set forth the boundaries of that land. (If Willis did not have clear title to the land, then he could not pass title on, ultimately to Stover.) The plaintiff further argued that Logan was only one of three Commissioners, and was without authority to issue a Warrant of Lands on his own.

The Court ruled that it had been common practice for land to be granted by the use of orders from the Proprietor’s Officers such as the letter order at issue here. The court noted that a year earlier, in the case of Hewes v. M'Dowell , a similar order had been ruled admissible, and that therefore, the order at issue was given into evidence.

Hewes v. M'Dowell, 1 U.S. 5 (1762) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Also considered as evidence was the actual survey completed by Isaac Taylor in 1720, bearing the notation "William Willis, 400 acres (1.6 km²)", even though, according to Dallas’s annotations, the survey was never returned to the land office, but found among Taylor’s survey papers some years after his death.

Dallas’s notes also indicate that this matter was subsequently appealed to the King and Council, who affirmed the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Precedential effect

Lessee of Fothergill v. Stover, or as it is sometimes known, Fothergill’s Lessee v. Stover, would be cited frequently in later years by other courts. In Sims' Lessee v. Irvine , 3 U.S. 425 (1799), the United States Supreme Court would cite it as evidence of the confusion in Pennsylvania between the concepts of legal title and equitable title. As late as 1959, the Air Force Board of Review in the case of United States v. Bean^[3] cited Fothergill for the proposition that official letters and communications written by public officials in the course of their duties are admissible to the same extent that official records and reports are admissible.

Notes

↑ Cohen, Morris and O’Connor, Sharon H. A Guide to the Early Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, Fred B. Rothman & Co, Littleton Colorado, 1995
↑ Hall, Kermit, ed. Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford 1992), pp 215, 727
↑ 21 C.M.R. 699, 703

Related Research Articles

This is a list of all the cases from volume 1 of the United States Reports. None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and only a few in the second volume of United States Reports are actually decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts dating from the colonial period and the first decade after independence. Alexander J. Dallas, a Philadelphia lawyer and journalist, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume, which he called Reports of cases ruled and adjudged in the courts of Pennsylvania, before and since the Revolution. This would come to be known as the first volume of Dallas Reports.

Lessee of Hyam v. Edwards, is the title of two separate decisions of the Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. The first decision is found at 1 U.S. 1 (1759) and is the first decision that appears in the first volume of United States Reports. The second decision is found at 1 U.S. 2 (1759).

Lessee of Weston v Stammers, 1 U.S. 2 (1759) were two separate decisions of the Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. They are a among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Stevenson v. Pemberton, 1 U.S. 3 (1760) is a decision of the Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Lessee of Ashton v. Ashton, 1 U.S. 4 (1760) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

The King v. Lukens, 1 U.S. 5 (1762) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Nixon and Harper v. Long and Plumstead, 1 U.S. 6 (1762) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Wallace v. Child, 1 U.S. 7 (1763) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Price v. Watkins, 1 U.S. 8 (1763) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

The King v. Haas, 1 U.S. 9 (1764) is a decision of a Pennsylvania provincial court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports, and is among the earliest surviving reports of judicial proceedings in North America. It is also one of the first attempts to apply the writ of habeas corpus, then an established principle of English law, in the English colonies that later became the first thirteen states of the United States of America.

Lessee of Albertson v. Robeson, 1 U.S. 9 (1764) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports.

Den ex dem. Murray v. Hoboken Land & Improv. Co., 59 U.S. 272 (1856), was a case before the United States Supreme Court.

Lessee of Richardson v. Campbell, 1 U.S. 10 (1764) is a decision of a Pennsylvania provincial court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports, and is among the earliest surviving reports of judicial proceedings in North America. It is also one of the first applications of the Statute of Frauds, then an established principle of English law, in the English colonies that later became the first thirteen states of the United States of America.

Sims's Lessee v. Irvine, 3 U.S. 425 (1799), is an early United States Supreme Court case about conflicting land claims. General William Irvine had been granted Montour's Island by Pennsylvania for his service in the American Revolutionary War, but the island was also claimed by Charles Simms of Virginia. The Court unanimously found in favor of Simms, who had the earlier claim.

The Marshall Court (1801–1835) issued some of the earliest and most influential opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, several of them written by Chief Justice John Marshall himself. However, without exception, the remarks of the Court on aboriginal title during this period are dicta. Only one indigenous litigant ever appeared before the Marshall Court, and there, Marshall dismissed the case for lack of original jurisdiction.

Craig et. al. v. Radford, 16 U.S. 594 (1818), is a United States Supreme Court decision delivered by Justice Bushrod Washington on March 12, 1818. The dispute rose from a suit in chancery to establish clear title to land which had been granted first to one party in 1774 and then again, in parts, to other parties in 1780. Radford won the suit in the Kentucky Circuit Court but Craig et al. appealed before the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court decree.

Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court decision that created the modern "independent source doctrine" exception to the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule makes most evidence gathered through violations of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution inadmissible in criminal trials as "fruit of the poisonous tree". In Murray, the Court ruled that when officers conduct two searches, the first unlawful and the second lawful, evidence seized during the second search is admissible if the second search "is genuinely independent of [the] earlier one."

References

Hall, Kermit, ed. Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford 1992)

Goebel, Jr., Julius, The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States Volume 1: Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801 (Macmillan, 1971)

Walters, Jr., Raymond, Alexander Dallas: Lawyer -- Politician -- Financier, 1759 - 1817 (Da Capo Press, 1969)

Lessee of Fothergill v. Stover, 1 U.S. 6 (1 Dall. 6) (1763)