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Source: San Francisco Call, 14 August 1895, page 8.

The San Miguel Rancho. Land-Owners Laugh at the Twenty-Four Million Dollar Suit. Spanish Laws are Quoted. Many of the Land Companies and Private Owners Have Government Patents. The pending suit of the Noe heirs against the property-owners in that part of the city known as the San Miguel Rancho, an account of which was published exclusively in THE CALL yesterday morning, created an interest among the dwellers of the district in proportion to the enormity of the land values involved.

Careful and conservative estimates do not decrease the probable amount of the property values as first given—$24,000,000—and some place it even higher. In all such suits there is a disposition to consider the action in the manner of a “bluff” for ulterior purposes, but in this instance the long residence and social standing of the plaintiffs in this City is calculated to render any such deduction or surmise inappropriate.

The Noe heirs have employed prominent and responsible Mexican consul, in connection with Messr. Gunn & Koscialowski, to prosecute a thorough research into the fundamental Spanish laws in operation at the time the Governor of Alta California made the grant of one square league of land to Jose de Jesus Noe. All the early land transactions were made under these laws, and the operation thereof has furnished the basis of innumerable suits to satisfy title since the State was admitted ot the Union.

The attorneys for the plaintiffs call attention to the fact that the California courts have been at variance in their interpretation of the Spanish laws for years past, and that no ultimatum has ever been established. This may also furnish an explanation for the disinclination of other attorneys likely to be interested in the big suit on behalf of the 7000 or more defendants to express an opinion concerning the extent to which land grant transactions are amendable to the Spanish law. Whatever the cause, those who were asked for an opinion yesterday declined to express themselves on the ground that they had not had time to look up the law.

Mr. Koscialowski said:

There is nothing but law in the suit, and the heirs are too well known to permit of the slightest suspicion of a money extortion scheme. The courts of California have held almost universally in their construction fo the Mexican law that all land grants made prior to the admission of California into the Union should be classified as “bienes gananciales” (donations) made by the Government. In the case of Panaud vs. Jones, First Cal. 448, the court, after reviewing the case at considerable length, decided that the property received by Alviso, by way of grant was ganaciales (gains), and asserts that Alviso had entire control and right to dispose of the whole gananciales. Mrs. Alviso died before her husband, but the court held that no estate vested in the children, and that it was common property on the decease of their mother, and that their title interest only became perfect after the death of their father, and only then after the debts had been paid. Now, by Escriche’s (Spanish lawbook) definition of gananciales, it is shown that property received by the grantee as a reward for military services was his separate property, for at the time he was performed these services he received a salary and support from the vices he received a salary and support from the Government. But if, at the time of performing these services, he was paying his own expenses, living on the income derived from the “dotal” property of the marriage, then such grant should be gananciales. Alviso received this grant in return for military services, and it is not known whether he lived upon the salary received from the Government during the performance of these services, or whether he paid his own expenses out of the gains and profits. I call attention to this for the reason that Escriche says that the wife had tacit mortgage on the separate property of the husband to compel said husband to make good to her or her heirs the dotal property he might have received either before or after marriage. Now, this grant received by Alviso for military services may have been his separate property, in which case his heirs would have a claim upon it, but not through their mother’s mortgage upon the same as described above.

Many of those connected with the land and improvement companies operating in the district have Government patent titles to the land, and laugh at the idea of such a preposterous claim being set up at this time.