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4 unusual facts about Lorenzo Sawyer


Lorenzo Sawyer

In December of that year, as the term of Chief Justice Sawyer was about to expire, President Ulysses S. Grant nominated him to the United States circuit court for the Ninth Circuit (which later became the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit).

In 1884, he handed down what became known as the Sawyer Decision in Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company which abruptly ended hydraulic mining in Northern California's Gold Country.

In the spring of 1861 he formed a law partnership with the General C. H. S. Williams, and in the winter of 1861-62 they determined to open a branch office in Virginia City, Nevada.

In 1840 he emigrated to Ohio, where he pursued his studies for a time at the Western Reserve College, and afterward continued his studies at Columbus and at Central College of Ohio near Columbus.


Mussel Slough Tragedy

Besides the 1874 Supreme Court ruling, a critical moment came on December 15, 1879, when Judge Lorenzo Sawyer of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in Orton, 32 F. 457 (C.C.D. Cal. 1879), that the federal government controlled the railroad land grants, and more importantly, the state could not control ultra vires acts of corporations.


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