OCTOBER TERM, 1992
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit
No. 91-1158. Argued November 9, 1992—Decided December 14, 1992
After private plaintiffs brought suit against private defendants in the District Court to quiet title to certain land riparian to the Mississippi River, Louisiana intervened in the action and filed a third-party complaint against Mississippi seeking to determine the boundary between the two States in the vicinity of the disputed land. Following this Court's denial of leave to Louisiana to file a bill of complaint against Mississippi in this Court, the District Court found the land in question to be part of Mississippi and quieted title in the plaintiffs. The Court of Appeals reversed.
Held: The uncompromising language of 28 U. S. C. § 1251(a), which gives to this Court "original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States" (emphasis added), deprived the District Court of jurisdiction over Louisiana's third-party complaint against Mississippi. Though § 1251(a) is phrased in terms of a grant of jurisdiction to this Court, the plain meaning of "exclusive" necessarily denies jurisdiction of such cases to any other federal court. See, e. g., California v. Arizona, 440 U. S. 59, 63. The District Court's adjudication of a private action involving the location of the boundary between two States does not violate § 1251(a), since that section speaks in terms of parties, not claims or issues. But the adjudication of such an action would not be binding on the States in any way. Because both of the courts below intermixed the questions of title to real property and of the state boundary's location, it must be determined on remand whether on this record the claims of title may fairly be decided without additional proceedings in the District Court. Pp. 75-79.
937 F. 2d 247, reversed and remanded.
Rehnquist, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
James W. McCartney argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Robert R. Bailess, Charles Alan Wright, Mike Moore, Robert E. Sanders, and Richard H. Page.
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