In the case of Shipman v. Straitsville Central Mining Company, 1894, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of Straitsville Central Mining Company. The dispute arose when Mr. Shipman claimed that he had a patent for certain lands in Ohio where valuable coal deposits were discovered and subsequently mined by the defendant company without his permission. However, it was found that Mr.Shipman's patent did not include mineral rights to those lands as they were reserved by Congress under an Act passed in 1871 which allowed only surface rights to be granted while retaining mineral rights with government unless explicitly mentioned otherwise. Therefore, since no explicit mention about mineral rights was made on Mr.Shipman's patent document issued after this act came into effect, he could not claim ownership over them or any profits derived from their extraction.

In the dissenting opinion for Shipman v. Straitsville Central Mining Company, it was argued that the court majority erred in its interpretation of Ohio state law regarding mining rights and property boundaries. The dissent held that under Ohio law, a landowner has exclusive right to all minerals beneath their property unless explicitly sold or leased to another party. Therefore, any unauthorized extraction of coal from beneath an individual's land by a neighboring mine constitutes trespassing and theft. In this case, the defendant mining company had knowingly extracted coal from beneath plaintiff’s land without permission or compensation - an act which should be considered illegal regardless of whether they accessed these resources via tunnels originating on their own property or not. Furthermore, the dissent disagreed with the majority's reliance on English common law precedents which allowed such actions as long as no physical damage was done to surface lands; arguing instead that American legal principles favor clear ownership rights over shared usage concepts found in older European laws.