Smith v. McCullough, 270 U.S. 456 (1926)
Please note: this case begins in mid-page. It therefore shares a citation with the last page of the previous case. If you are attempting to follow a link to the last page of 270 U.S. 452, click here.
Smith v. McCullough
No. 22
Argued October 8, 1925
Decided March 22, 1926
270 U.S. 456
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
Syllabus
1. Whatever is essential to federal jurisdiction must be alleged in the complaint; otherwise the suit must be dismissed unless the defect in the complaint be cured by amendment. P. 459.
2. Where the jurisdiction depended on the existence of a dispute over the construction of federal statutes which was not properly shown in the bill, but which was the principal controversy in several trials in which jurisdiction was assumed to exist by the courts and both parties, and this appeared by the record, held that the defect was amendable, and would be treated as amended in this Court. P. 459.
3. A judgment of the circuit court of appeal reversing the district court and remanding the case for further proceedings is interlocutory, and a party against whom it was rendered and who did not acquiesce in it is not precluded by it from reopening the questions so decided when the case is again appealed after a second trial. P. 461.
4. Where a Quapaw Indian, whose general power to alienate or lease his allotment was restricted by Acts of Congress applying generally to his tribe, was permitted by a special Act to alienate, subject to the supervision and approval of the Secretary of the Interior, and made a mortgage with such approval, and subsequently received a release and reconveyance, held that the transaction did not rid him of the restrictions on the land, and that the validity of a lease he afterwards made, without the Secretary’s approval, was governed by the Acts first mentioned. P. 462.
5. A Quapaw Indian, permitted by the Act of June 7, 1897, to lease his allotment for mining purposes for ten years, made a lease for that term with an added provision that the term continue thereafter so long as minerals could be produced with profit. Held that the lease could not be sustained upon the ground that the addition was severable from the lawful term. P. 463.
6. Where the allottee undertakes to negotiate a lease for a forbidden term, he enters a field in which he must be regarded as without authority or capacity, and the resulting lease is void. P. 465.
285 F. 698 reversed.
Appeal from a decree of the circuit court of appeals affirming a decree of the district court which, in a suit to determine adverse claims based on conflicting mining leases given by a Quapaw Indian, upheld the plaintiff’s lease and cancelled the defendants’ leases to the extent of the conflict. See also 243 . 823.