In the case of Egan v. McDonald in 1917, the United States Supreme Court dealt with a dispute over land ownership in Alaska. The plaintiff, Egan, claimed that he had purchased a piece of property from its original owner and was therefore entitled to it. However, the defendant, McDonald argued that he had obtained rights to this same property through adverse possession - a legal doctrine allowing someone who has occupied or used another's property for an extended period without being challenged by the rightful owner to claim title to it. The court ruled in favor of McDonald on grounds that his use and occupation of the land were public and continuous enough for him to gain ownership through adverse possession under Alaskan law at that time which required ten years' worth uninterrupted use. This decision established important precedents regarding how principles like adverse possession should be applied when determining rightful ownership disputes over properties.

In the dissenting opinion for Egan v. McDonald, Justice Holmes disagreed with the majority's interpretation of a Washington state law regarding property rights and inheritance. He argued that under this law, if a man dies without leaving any descendants or parents but has siblings who are still alive, his estate should be divided equally among those siblings. If some of those siblings have already passed away but left children (the deceased man's nieces and nephews), these children should inherit their parent’s share in equal parts. However, the majority interpreted the statute differently to mean that all living relatives at one degree of kinship would divide half of an intestate’s property equally amongst themselves while descendants from predeceased relatives at same degree would split only what remained after such division - which was not how Justice Holmes believed it was intended to work based on its wording and structure.