Baker v. Morton and the demise of the Omaha Claim Club

Picture this: It’s the 1850s, and Omaha’s wilder than a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Enter the Omaha Claim Club, a posse of land-grabbing varmints who’d make even the most hardened outlaw blush. These hombres had a unique way of “negotiating” land deals – by dunking folks in the Missouri River!

Now, our hero in this tale is one Alexander Baker, a fella who thought he’d struck gold with his land claim. But faster than you can spit, the Claim Club boys came a-knockin’, threatening to turn poor Baker into fish food if he didn’t hand over his deed. Baker, not keen on sleeping with the catfish, signed faster than a prairie dog diving into its hole.

But hold your horses! Baker wasn’t about to let these claim-jumping jackals get away with it. He took his case all the way to the big boys in Washington, and in 1870, the Supreme Court laid down the law in Baker v. Morton. They ruled that a deed signed with a rope around your neck and river water in your lungs ain’t worth the paper it’s written on!

This ruling was like a roundhouse kick to the Omaha Claim Club’s teeth. Suddenly, their “persuasive” tactics weren’t looking so shiny. With the U.S. Land Office setting up shop and the government finally getting around to surveying the land, the Claim Club found itself about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

By 1860, the Omaha Claim Club and its ilk across Nebraska had ridden off into the sunset, leaving behind a legacy more mixed than a bowl of trail mix. Some folks say they brought order to the Wild West, while others reckon they were just a bunch of bullies with good PR.

So, there you have it – the tale of Baker v. Morton, where justice was served colder than a mountain stream, and the Omaha Claim Club learned that you can’t always get what you want, even if you try sometimes, and dunk people in the river!

Baker v. Morton, 79 U.S. 150 (1870)

United States Supreme Court

Territorial courts are created by an act of Congress, and they usually possess jurisdiction of controversies of a civil nature, without regard to the inquiry whether the controversies, if they had arisen in a State, would have been cognizable in the tribunals of the State or in the Federal courts. [1 Stat. at Large, 77; 9 Id. 209; Benner v. Porter, 9 Howard, 235.]

By the organic act creating the Territory of Nebraska the judicial power of the Territory was vested in a Supreme Court and certain district courts, and the provision was that the jurisdiction of those courts should be as prescribed and limited by law. [10 Stat. at Large, 280]

Whenever a Territory is admitted into the Union as a State the cases pending in the Territorial courts of a Federal character or jurisdiction are transferred to the proper Federal court, but all such as are not cognizable in the Federal courts are transferred to the tribunals of the new State. Pending cases, where the Federal and State courts have concurrent jurisdiction, may be transferred either to the State or Federal courts by either party possessing that option under the existing laws.

On the seventh of September, 1860, the appellant filed his bill of complaint in one of the district courts of the Territory against Roswell G. Pierce and the appellee, in which he alleged that he, the appellant, under the laws of the United States, settled, improved, and entered as a pre-emptor the southwest quarter of section eight, township fifteen north, range thirteen east, in the county of Douglas; that the first-named respondent claimed to own the tract so settled, improved, and entered as a pre-emption right by the complainant; that the said respondent made claim to the same, not by virtue of any law of the United States, but by virtue of the rules and regulations of what was known at the time as the Omaha Claim Club, an organization composed of one or two hundred men, the object of which was to protect every claimant, whether resident or non-resident, in holding three hundred and twenty acres of land as a claim upon the public lands of the United States; that a few days before he, the complainant, entered the land the said Pierce and his agent and a few other persons, members of the said club, came to the house of the complainant, and that the said Pierce, as the leader of the party, assured the complainant that unless he would agree to deed the tract, in case he preempted the same, to the said Pierce, that he, the said Pierce, with the assistance of the said claim club, would take his life by hanging or drowning him, or in such other manner as the agents of the club might think fit and proper to employ; that on the tenth of August, 1857, he entered the tract under the pre-emption laws of the United States, when the said Pierce, his agents, and certain members of that club again came to him and repeated the threats before used, and assured him that unless he immediately conveyed the tract to the said Pierce they would carry their threats into execution, and that he, by means of those threats and through fear that the threats would be carried into effect if he refused to convey the land, on the same day conveyed the tract to the said Pierce by deed in the usual form, which was duly acknowledged.

Based upon these allegations the complainant charges that the conveyance made by him was procured by threats and through fear of death and without consideration. Morton, the appellee, was also made a party to the bill of complaint, because he was a judgment creditor of the other respondent, and claimed an interest in the land by virtue, as he alleged, of a lien created by his judgment. Wherefore the complainant prayed that the conveyance of the tract he made to the said Pierce may be decreed to be inoperative and void and that the said Pierce may be decreed to reconvey the premises to the complainant.

Service was made by publication, as the respondents were non-residents, and the respondents failing to appear and plead, answer, or demur to the bill of complainant, they were duly defaulted, and a decree was entered that the bill of complaint be taken as confessed.

Testimony was taken and the cause was submitted to the court and the court found that the conveyance was obtained by the said Pierce from the complainant through threats of personal violence made by the said Pierce and his agents, and without consideration, and a decree was entered ordering that the conveyance should be cancelled, and requiring the respondent to reconvey the premises to the complainant, as prayed in the bill of complaint.

Pursuant to a motion, however, subsequently filed by the appellee, it was ordered by the court that the decree as to him should be vacated, and that he have leave to appear and make defence. He accordingly filed an answer, in which he admitted that the complainant entered the land as alleged in the bill of complaint, and that he, the complainant, had been in the possession of the same from that time to the present, but alleged that the complainant occupied the same as tenant of the other respondent. Responsive to the charge made that the deed was procured from the complainant by threats, the appellee alleged that he had no knowledge upon the subject, that he could not answer to the charge as to his belief or otherwise, but upon information he denied the same and alleged the fact to be that the deed was the free and voluntary act of the complainant, and that the other respondent was the true and lawful owner in fee of the premises, divested of all the claims set forth in the bill of complaint; that he, the appellee, loaned to the other respondent the sum of five thousand dollars, and that the borrower failing to make payment as stipulated he brought suit against him and recovered judgment for the amount, of which two thousand five hundred dollars remained due and unpaid, and that his judgment was a lien on the land described in the pleadings. Wherefore he insisted that his judgment ought in equity to be held a better claim on the land than the claim made by the complainant.

Defects exist in the record, arising from the loss of some portion of the minutes and files of the clerk, but it is conceded that the usual replication was filed, and the record shows that proofs having been taken by both parties the cause was heard and the District Court of the Territory entered a decree dismissing the bill of complaint and awarded costs to the respondent. From which decree the complainant appealed to the Supreme Court of the Territory.

Pending the appeal in the Supreme Court of the Territory, to wit, on the ninth of February 1867, Nebraska was admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original States. [14 Stat. at Large, 392.]

Undermined as the appeal was at that date, and it appearing in due form that the parties were citizens of different States, the cause was transferred to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska, and the parties having been again heard the Circuit Court determined that the deed made by the complainant to the other respondent was not made while he, the complainant, was in duress, and that the appellee, by reason of his judgment, has a better equity in the premises than the complainant, and entered a decree dismissing the bill of complaint. Whereupon the complainant appealed to this court and now insists that the decree of the Circuit Court ought to be reversed.

Much examination of the evidence or of the law applicable in the decision of the case is unnecessary, as the facts are substantially the same as in a case between the same parties which was recently heard and determined by the court after mature deliberation. [Brown v. Pierce, 7 Wallace, 214.]

By the bill of complaint, a complete title is set up by the complainant to the land under the pre-emption laws of the United States, and the answer admits that he held such a title at the date of the deed he made to the other respondent. Argument upon that topic, therefore, is unnecessary, and the complainant charges that he was induced to execute the deed by threats and from fear of death or great bodily harm, and the respondent concedes that he is not able to deny that allegation from any personal knowledge upon the subject, and he even goes further and says that he cannot answer concerning the same, because he has no information or belief upon the subject. Such an answer does not make it necessary for the complainant to introduce more than one witness to overcome the defence, but the court is not inclined to place the decision upon any technical ground, as the proofs in the case show to the entire satisfaction of the court that all the matters alleged in the bill of complaint are true, and that the same are fully established, even if the allegations of the answer be regarded as denials made by a respondent in respect to matters within his own knowledge. Some conflict undoubtedly exists in the proofs, but the weight of the evidence is so decidedly with the complainant that the court feels no hesitation in saying that the allegations of the bill of complaint are fully proved.

Complete incipient title was acquired by the complainant under the pre-emption laws of the United States, and on the same day the defaulted respondent, through threats to take his life if he refused, compelled him to convey the same to that party, and the settled law of this court is that such acts amount to legal duress, and that a deed, or other written obligation or contract, procured by such means, is inoperative and void, and that rule is applied in all jurisdictions where the principles of the common law prevail. [Brown v. Pierce, 7 Wallace, 214.]

Actual violence is not necessary to constitute duress even at common law, as understood in the parent country, because consent is the very essence of a contract, and if there be compulsion there is no consent, and it is well-settled law that moral compulsion, such as that produced by threats to take life or to inflict great bodily harm, as well as that produced by imprisonment, is sufficient to destroy free agency, without which there can be no contract, as in that state of the case there is no consent. [Chitty on Contracts, 192; 2 Greenleaf on Evidence, 283; 2 Institutes, 482; 2 Rolle’s Abridgement, 124; Richardson v. Duncan, 3 New Hampshire, 508; Watkins v. Baird, 6 Massachusetts, 511.]

Where a party enters into a contract for fear of loss of life, or for fear of loss of limb, or fear of mayhem, or for fear of imprisonment, the contract is as clearly void as when it was procured by duress of imprisonment, which is where there is an arrest for an improper purpose without just cause, or where there is an arrest for a just cause but without lawful authority, or for a just cause but for an unlawful purpose, and the rule is that in either of those events the party arrested, if he was thereby induced to enter into a contract, may avoid it as one procured by duress.

2. Judgments were not liens at common law, but Congress, in adopting the modes of process prevailing in the States at the time the judicial system of the United States was organized, made judgments recovered in the Federal courts liens in all cases where they were so by the laws of the States, and a later act of Congress has provided that judgments shall cease to have that operation in the same manner and at the same periods in the respective Federal districts as like processes do when issued from the State courts. [Williams v. Benedict et al., 8 Howard, 111; Riggs v. Johnson Co., 6 Wallace, 166.]

Such a lien confers a right to levy on the land to the exclusion of other adverse interests acquired subsequently to the judgment, but the lien constitutes no property or right in the land itself, as it is merely a general lien securing a preference over subsequently acquired interests in the property. [Conard v. Atlantic Ins. Co., 1 Peters, 443; Massingill v. Downs, 7 Howard, 767; Buchan v. Sumner, 2 Barbour’s Ch. 165; Ells v. Tousley, 1 Paige, 280; White v. Carpenter, 2 Id. 217.]

For these reasons we are of opinion that the Circuit Court erred in entering a decree for the appellee.

DECREE REVERSED with costs, and the cause remanded with directions to enter a decree for the appellant,

IN CONFORMITY WITH THE OPINION OF THIS COURT.

Sources

Justia US Supreme Court. “Baker v. Morton, 79 U.S. 12 Wall. 150 (1870).” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/79/150/

Wikipedia. “Baker v. Morton.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Morton

FindLaw. “BAKER v. MORTON, 79 U.S. 150 (1870).” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/79/150.html

CourtListener. “Baker v. Morton, 79 U.S. 150, 20 L. Ed. 262, 12 Wall. 150, 1870 U.S. LEXIS 1374.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/88372/baker-v-morton/

CaseMine. “Duress in Land Conveyance: The Landmark Decision in BAKER v. MORTON.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://www.casemine.com/commentary/us/duress-in-land-conveyance:-the-landmark-decision-in-baker-v.-morton/view