United States v. Leiter Minerals, Inc.

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, District Judge.

This case has a tortuous history. It begins in a Louisiana state court almost nine years ago, when the Leiter Company, successor to the interests of the Leiter family, former owners of substantial acreage in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, who in 1938 had sold their lands to the Government for a wildlife refuge with a reservation of the minerals, filed suit1 against one of the mineral lessees of the United States, Allen *562Lobrano,2 and the operator under that lease, the California Company. Though, by its own terms, the mineral reservation had long expired when…