The U.S. Supreme Court case South Spring Hill Gold Mining Company v. Amador Medean Gold Mining Company in 1891 revolved around a dispute over mining rights and property boundaries between the two companies in California's gold country. The South Spring Hill Gold Mining Co., which had been operating on its claim for several years, sued the Amador Medean Gold Mining Co., alleging that it had encroached upon their land and extracted valuable ore from it without permission or compensation. The court ruled in favor of the defendant, stating that they were within their right to mine where they did because both parties' claims overlapped due to an error when defining initial boundaries by public land surveyors decades earlier. This ruling set a precedent for future cases involving similar disputes over mineral rights and property lines.

In the dissenting opinion for South Spring Hill Gold Mining Company v. Amador Medean Gold Mining Company, Justice Field disagreed with the majority's decision to uphold a lower court ruling that granted mining rights to Amador based on an 1866 law. He argued that this law was not applicable because it only applied to unclaimed lands and did not give miners any new rights they didn't already have under common law. Furthermore, he contended that South Spring had a valid claim under California state laws which allowed anyone who discovered minerals on public land and followed certain procedures to gain exclusive possession of those minerals. Therefore, in his view, since South Spring complied with these requirements before Amador staked its claim, it should be awarded the mining rights instead of Amador.