In the United States vs Throckmorton, it was found that even after twenty years, after the original claimant was dead and the land had transferred to other owners, that a document, the last item required to perfect the original claim of title from a previous land grant issued by Mexico, was suspect. The document, the only unsatisfied requirement of the claim, was eventually determined to be fraudulent. That fraud, meant that the claim was vacated, undoing possession of the land that had been occupied since before California was a territory of the United States.
While this is a cursory explanation of the case, the vital point to be made is that Justice Miller, recognizing the extraordinary hardship it would place on those who had, as far as they knew, done everything legally in purchasing the land in dispute, could not, at least through that deed, possess the land. Fraud vitiates everything.
