Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
The hearing on Vallejos' case began on 22 August 2011, and stretched out until the 24th. David Pannick represented the respondent, the Commissioner of Registration. During the hearing, the courtroom was packed to overflowing with lawyers, journalists, and other members of the public, who took up not just the seats in the public gallery, but also those for defendants and jury members (the latter being unoccupied as the case at hand was not a jury trial but a judicial review). Another hundred people watched the proceedings on a large-screen television in the lobby, while protestors both supporting and opposing Vallejos' case faced off outside the building without incident.
Rancho San Diego Island
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho San Diego Island was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852. Frederick H. Billings, James R. Bolton and Henry Wager Halleck of the law firm Halleck, Peachy & Billings represented Simmons Estate, as Bezer had died Sept 26,1850 in San Francisco. In 1851, Executors of Bezer Simmons sold to William Henry Aspinwall, and the grant was patented to Archibald C. Peachy (a law partner of Simmons Brother-in-Law, Frederick Billings) and William H. Aspinwall in 1869.