Richardson's Lessee v. Campbell

Last updated February 18, 2019

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.

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.

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.

<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.

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."

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, decisions appearing in these early reports have dual citation forms; one for the volume number of the United States Reports, and one for the set of reports named for the reporter (called nominative reports). For example, the complete citation to Lessee of Richardson v. Campbell is 1 U.S. 10 (1 Dallas 10) (1764).

The Decision

Dallas’s report of this case, as with many of his early decisions, does not include the actual language of the court’s decision, but only describes the proceedings in the incomplete and general terms that has evoked criticism from later generations.^[3]

As with many of the first cases reported by Dallas, this case involved a dispute over title to land in the Pennsylvania colony. The unnamed plaintiff, a tenant (lessee) of landowner Richardson, and whose right to possession of the leased land depended on Richardson’s good title to the land, thus found himself defending Richardson’s title to the land. The tenant sued Campbell, an opposing claimant to the same real property. The plaintiff offered a patent dated 1762, which granted title in the disputed land to Richardson, or Richardson’s predecessor in title. The defendant Campbell offered receipts showing payments made to the Secretary of the Land Office, one Mr. Peters, several years prior to Richardson’s patent. The plaintiff argued that those payments were for an adjacent tract of land.

A land patent is an exclusive land grant made by a sovereign entity with respect to a particular tract of land. To make such a grant "patent", a sovereign must document the land grant, securely sign and seal the document (patent), and openly publish the documents for the public to see. An official land patent is the highest evidence of right, title, and interest to a defined area. It is usually granted by a central, federal, or state government to an individual or to a private company.

The defendant Campbell then offered a witness who was prepared to testify that Thomas Penn, the son of Pennsylvania colony founder William Penn, and who had been Proprietor of the Colony of Pennsylvania during the relevant times, had verbally stated that the land in dispute had been sold to Campbell. The plaintiff objected to this testimony, and the Court refused to allow the witness to testify.

The Statute of Frauds in Colonial Courts

Though not mentioned by name, this case appears to be one of the first applications of the Statute of Frauds in the colonies. That rule, enacted by the British Parliament over eighty years before this decision was rendered, required (and in versions passed in every state in the Union^[4] still requires today) that certain transactions, including transactions involving interests in land, must be in writing, signed by the party against whom the transaction is sought to be enforced. The Court specifically ruled that the evidence of Thomas Penn’s parol (verbal) transaction would not be admitted at the trial of this case.

Precedential Effect

The principle that transactions involving interests in land had to be in writing, signed by the “party to be charged” was well established by the Revolution, and appears in numerous colonial and early state court decisions. Infrequently, this decision was cited in support of that proposition. This decision was last known to be cited in or by a court of record in 1872, by a litigant in Kraut's Appeal, 71 Pa. 64, (Pa. 1872) who cited it before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for the premise that the right to pass through defendants' house could not be shown by parol (that is, verbal evidence).

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), p 215, 727
↑ Raymond J. Walters, Jr. Alexander James Dallas: Lawyer - Politician -- Financier (New York: Da Capo Press 1969) p. 102.
↑ Louisiana, with its civil law tradition, has enacted a partial version of the Statute of Frauds.

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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.

West v. Barnes, 2 U.S. 401 (1791), was the first United States Supreme Court decision and the earliest case calling for oral argument. Van Staphorst v. Maryland (1791) was docketed prior to West v. Barnes but settled before the Court heard the case: West was argued on August 2, 1791 and decided on August 3, 1791. Collet v. Collet (1791) was the first appellate case docketed with the Court but was dropped before it could be heard. Supreme Court Reporter Alexander Dallas did not publish the justices' full opinions in West v. Barnes, which were published in various newspapers around the country at the time, but he published an abbreviated summary of the decisions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The King v. Rapp 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 court decisions in North 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.

The Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1836–1864), issued several important decisions on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, building on the opinions of aboriginal title in the Marshall Court.

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 (MacMillian, 1971)
Walters, Jr., Raymond Alexander Dallas: Lawyer—Politician—Financier, 1759 - 1817 (Da Capo Press, 1969)