amended certificate of location, when made, becomes the completed. location of the discoverer, and is just as valid as if it had been made in the first instance. It necessarily follows that parties coming upon the mining claim and ground described in the amended certificate of location, subsequent to the perfection of such amended location in compliance with the mining laws, can acquire no rights, because they have not been injured, and have no right to complain. The amended certificate of location in the present case contains the names of several persons, as locators, who were shown by the evidence to have legally acquired interests therein after the original location had been made, and before the amended certificate was prepared or filed. The rule is that, where the second or amended notice or certificate of location contains names other than those set forth in the original, it cannot be taken advantage of by other parties. It may be treated as an original notice as to the persons whose names do not appear on the first, and as a supplemental or amended notice as to those whose names appear on both. Lind. on Mines (2d Ed.) § 398; Thompson v. Spray, 72 Cal. 528, 529, 14 Pac. 182. The law does not require that the object or purpose of making the amended certificate shall be specified therein. A general statement that it is made to cure errors or defects will be sufficient, the general rule upon this subject being that the filing of such certificate is effectual for all the purposes enumerated in the statute, whether such purposes are mentioned in the certificate or not. Lind. on Mines (2d. Ed.) § 398; Johnson v. Young, 18 Colo. 625, 629, 34 Pac. 173. * * One of the reasons testified to at the trial was that the original north side line of the Valley View took in the Silver Top discovery shaft, and also interfered with other previous locations. Another was to straighten up the south line. * The location of the Valley View under the amended certificate of location was and is valid, as against the Pyramid location, the owner of which had not at that time acquired any right whatever to the ground in controversy. * * ** The broad contention of complainant, as made in all the three cases, is that the locators of the Valley View must be held to the lines of its original location; that they acquired no new rights in their amended location, because it included ground not within its original boundaries, and they did not make any relocation of such new territory, and did no annual assessment work thereon, and did not make any discovery of mineral therein, and were never in the actual possession thereof. The law does not require that such things should be done in order to make the claim, as described in the amended certificate of location, valid to the full extent of the boundaries therein described, as against any subsequent locator of any portion of said ground. If such is not the true intent and meaning of the state statute, it has no meaning, and ought never to have been passed. The object of the state statute has already been fully discussed. It was to protect, not to deceive, the locator. It was to enable the miner to make good the developments he had made—the assessment work he had done under his original location—and at the same time include other ground not embraced in his original notice or first certificate of location, so as to make his lines conform to the directions which his labor, time, and expense had indicated to him as the true course of the lode. In making the additional amended notice, it was not necessary for him to take physical possession of the additional ground, sink new shafts, or make any new discoveries of mineral. 45b * * * Let a decree be entered in accordance with the views herein expressed in favor of the defendant, and for its costs. BERGQUIST ET AL. v. WEST VIRGINIA-WYOMING 1910. SUPREME COURT OF WYOMING. 18 Wyo. 234, 106 Pac. 673. ACTION by C. B. Bergquist and another against the West Virginia-Wyoming Copper Company. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiffs bring error. Judgment affirmed. POTTER, C. J.46-This is an action for the possession of certain mining ground situated in the Upper Platte and Battle Lake mining district, in Carbon county in this state, and is brought in support of an adverse claim filed by the plaintiffs upon the application of the defendant for a patent to certain claims embracing the ground in controversy. Upon a trial in the district court, without a jury, there was a general finding in favor of the defendant and against the plaintiffs, and a judgment to the effect that the defendant is entitled to the possession of the premises by virtue of a full compliance with the statutes relating to the discovery and location of mining claims. The plaintiffs bring the case here on error. The plaintiffs claim under a location of the ground by them and one M. F. Cannon, as the "Merry Christmas" lode mining claim, on December 25, 1906, and a deed by Cannon subsequently conveying his interest to the plaintiff Bergquist. The defendant's claim to possession is based upon locations by its grantors of three lode mining claims named, respectively, the "Modoc," "Little Wonder," and "Little Joe." The location of the Modoc and Little Wonder and b But see, as to placer claims, Garden Gulch Bar Placer, 38 Land Dec. Dep. Int. 28; Chas. H. Head, 40 Land Dec. Dep. Int. 135. Parts of the opinion and all of the concurring opinion of Scott, J., are omitted. the original location of the Little Joe occurred prior to 1900; the Modoc, July 21, 1899, the Little Wonder, August 17, 1898, and the Little Joe (as originally located) September 16, 1897. The record does not disclose any adverse or conflicting claims prior to December 25, 1906, on which date it is alleged that the Merry Christmas was located, though it is claimed on the part of the defendant that a second location of the Little Joe was made on December 24, 1906, to protect the rights of the owners of that claim against any attempt by others with adverse interests to relocate the ground. On January 9, 1907, amended location certificates of the Modoc, Little Wonder, and original Little Joe were recorded, that of the Modoc and Little Joe being dated June 14, 1900, and of the Little Wonder June 13, 1900; they having been prepared in June, 1900, to agree with a survey of the claims made at that time. On April 12, 1907, the defendant, to whom the three claims, among others, had in the meantime been conveyed, filed another amended location certificate for each claim. The amended certificates appear to have been filed to more definitely or correctly define the claim as originally located, and not to change the surface boundaries. The conflict relates principally to the Merry Christmas and Little Joe; it appearing that in locating the former claim it was intended. to cover substantially the ground included within the latter, upon the supposition that the same had been forfeited and was open to relocation. The side lines of the Merry Christmas run parallel to and within a few feet of the corresponding lines of the Little Joe, and the claim extends a short distance northeasterly beyond the northeast end line of the Little Joe into the territory of the Little Wonder, leaving a small strip across the southwest end of the Little Joe, and a narrow strip along and, as we understand, within each of its side lines, untouched by the boundaries of the Merry Christmas location. With this explanation it will be sufficient, as showing the relative positions of the several claims mentioned, to refer to the map published with the opinion of this court in the case of Slothower v. Hunter et al., 15 Wyo. 189, 195, 88 Pac. 36.*7 From the evidence it appears that the original discovery upon the Little Joe was made at the time of its location in 1897. That claim, with the Little Wonder and others, was involved in the case of Slothower v. Hunter et al., supra, wherein this court held that the original recorded certificate of location of the Little Joe was void, in that it failed to give the length of the claim along the vein each way, measured from the center of the discovery shaft, as required by the statute of this state. Thereupon the attorney representing the opposing interests advised or suggested the location of the ground by the plaintiffs, upon the theory that the decision in the case aforesaid in effect annulled all rights under the Little Joe location, leav "The map from Slothower v. Hunter, 15 Wyo. 189, 88 Pac. 36, is as follows: 16-MINING LAW ing the ground unappropriated. A. M. Woodruff and F. E. Hunter, the latter being an original locator of the Little Joe, having learned of the decision in the Slothower Case, and that others were proposing to locate the ground, at once took steps to protect the Little Joe location, and to that end, on December 24, 1906, Woodruff prepared as of that date a notice of location of the Little Joe claim, to be posted in his name, and gave it to Hunter for that purpose. Hunter also signed the notice, and immediately went to the claim, reaching the same during the night, and thereupon, early in the morning of December 25th, placed the notice in the ridge log of the Little Joe shafthouse, and wrote another similar notice on a slab, signing his own name and Woodruff's as locators, and placed it on top of the shaft. Woodruff was one of the locators of the Modoc and the Little Wonder claims adjacent to the Little Joe, and Hunter was also one of the locators of those claims. About II o'clock in the forenoon, after Hunter had posted his notices as foresaid, the plaintiff Cothern and M. F. Cannon arrived upon the ground, and posted inside the shafthouse of the original Little Joe claim a notice of the location of the Merry Christmas lode, the names of the plaintiffs Bergquist and Cothern and M. F. Cannon being signed as locators; the said notice being posted on a slab tacked upon one of the logs of the shafthouse above the ground. Cothern and Cannon testified that when they arrived at the claim, they noticed tracks in the snow, and thereby understood that some one had recently been there, and that they then saw and read the notice of Woodruff and Hunter upon the slab. Considerable work had been done upon the original Little Joe, the shaft having been sunk to a depth of 50 or 60 feet, and the evidence shows that the claim had never been voluntarily abandoned. Hunter was one of the original discoverers and locators, and he and Woodruff did the work of sinking the shaft, and each knew, at the time of posting their notice, of the existence on the claim, and at the point where the notice was posted, of mineral-bearing rock in place. Woodruff was on the claim on December 26 or 27, 1906, and early in January, 1907, he caused a shaft to be sunk for the new Little Joe location, at a point about 60 feet easterly from the old shaft, and it was completed to the requisite depth of 10 feet on January 6, 1907, disclosing mineral-bearing rock in place. On January 29, 1907, a location certificate of the new Little Joe location signed by Woodruff was recorded. After the completion of the new Little Joe shaft, and probably on the following day, Cothern commenced the digging of a shaft for the Merry Christmas about fifty feet easterly from the old Little Joe shaft, and completed the same to the requisite depth disclosing mineral-bearing rock in place, about February 1, 1907. Thereafter, and before the expiration of 60 days from the date of posting the Merry Christmas notice, the locators thereof caused the boundaries |