To examine the voluminous mountains of evidence was no easy matter for the court. In one of his first decisions, Judge Morrison ruled that the scope of the case before him involved title to the land described in the deed executed by Alcade Joshua N. Bean on May 27, 1850 and recorded in Book B Page 110 of Deeds. Beanon was the mayor of the Pueblo of San Diego at the time. The grantees in the conveyance were Oliver S. Witherby (San Diego County's first assembyman and three term judge in the First District court,) Thomas J. Sutherland (San Diego's first acting mayor,) Cave J. Couts (the federal land surveyor,) Atkin S. Wright (councilman on the first San Diego City Council,) William H. Emory (another early San Diego engineer,) Agostin Haraszthy (first chief of police for the City of San Diego,) Jose Estudillo (of the pioneer Estudillo family,) Charles P. Noel (President of the First Board of Trustees for the City of San Diego,) Henry M. Clayton (the first elected county surveyor in San Diego,) and Juan M. Bandini (another pioneer San Diego family.)

The attorney for the plaintiffs petitioned for a change of venue in the case, alleging that the presiding judge had a conflict of interest. The motion was denied. In April of 1870 the City of San Diego was dismissed as a defendant after the Board of Trustees disclaimed any interest in the Middletown property. Shortly thereafter nine lots, each one hundred varas (about one yard) square, which lied along the southerly boundary of Middletown, were excluded from the case.

As the case plodded along, the court determined that the Middletown land be classified into three types: "Class One" which consisted on unnumbered lots and blocks; "Class Two" the reservation or wedge consisting of unnumbered blocks; and "Class Three" the tidelands portion. A lot was considered to be a parallelogram, fifty feet wide by one hundred feet long, and a block, two lots wide and six lots long.

But not all the court rulings went uncontested. Confusion over the chain of title of subsequent conveyances was compounded by the fact that William Emory was living in Nebraska and his testimony was contradictory. Objections by the plaintiffs as to the impartiality of Judge Morrison continued, including his choice of Pascoe as surveyor. As the proceedings dragged on the financial costs increased substantially, as tracings of the Pascoe map had to be made available to all litigants.