UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE

When the United States retires from the prosecution of a suit instituted to vacate a patent of public land without causing the appeal to be dismissed, and another party, claiming the same land under another patent, is in court to prosecute the appeal, this Court will not dismiss it on the motion of the appellee as of right, but will look into the case, and if the circumstances require it, will hear argument on the case and decide it.

Errors and irregularities in the process of entering and procuring title to public lands should be corrected in the Land Department, so long as there are means for revising the proceedings and correcting the errors. Silence for more than eight years after a party has abandoned a contract for a patent of mineral land, and has submitted to a decision of the question by the Land Department, however erroneous, is such laches as clubjuris

Page 129 U. S. 580

amounts to acquiescence in the proceedings and precludes a court of equity from interfering to annul them.