American Land Co. v. Zeiss

219 U.S. 47, 31 S. Ct. 200, 55 L. Ed. 82, 1911 U.S. LEXIS 1618

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: January 3, 1911
• Docket: 230
• Status: Published

Opinion

Mr. Chief Justice White,

after making the foregoing statement, delivered' the opinion of the court.

Although not objecting to an answer to the questions, nevertheless the American Land Company, which was the appellant below, suggests at bar a want of power to reply to the questions for a twofold reason-. First, because the certificate on its face indicates that the court below was not in a state of mind which required the instruction of this court, but was merely desirous of provoking a direct decision by this court, to avoid the delay and the public inconvenience which otherwise might result. Second, because the certificate is so broad as simply to refer the whole case to this court for decision instead of presenting definite propositions of law for solution. While it may be that these suggestions find possible support, considering the record in a detached way, we think when the certificate is considered as a whole and the subject with which it deals is propérly weighed the suggestions are without merit. We therefore pass to a consideration of the questions propounded.

It is apparent that-the substantial'considerations involved in the questions certified are embraced in the following, a, the authority of the State to, deal with the subject with which the statute is concerned; b, upon the hypothesis of the existence of poWer, the sufficiency of the. safeguards provided in the statute; c, upon tne like hypothesis the adequacy of the proceedings had in the particular cause with which the certificate deals. We shall consider these subjects separately.

As to the power of the State.

The conditions which led to the legislation in question were stated by the Supreme Court of California in Title & Document Restoration Co. v. Kerrigan, Judge, 150 California, 289, 305. The court said:

“It is also a matter of common knowledge that in the city and county of San Francisco, at least, if not in other counties, the disaster of April last worked so great a destruction of the public records as to make it impossible to trace any title with completeness of certainty. That some provision was necessary to enable the holders and owners of real estate in this city to secure to themselves such evidence of title as would enable them, not only to defend their possession, but to enjoy and exercise the equally important right of disposition, is. clear.”

• As it is indisputable that the general welfare of society is involved in the.security of the titles to real estate and in the public registry of such titles, it is obvious that the power to legislate as to such subjects inheres in the very nature of government. This being true, it follows that government possesses the power to remedy the confusion and uncertainty as to registered titles arising from a disaster like that described by the court below. We might well pursue no further the subject of the power of the State to enact the law in question, and thus leave its authority to depend upon the demonstration necessarily resulting from the obvious considerations just stated. As, however, the question of power is intimately interwoven with the sufficiency of the procedure adopted, and as a clear comprehension of the scope of the power will serve to elucidate the question of procedure, wé shall briefly refer to some of the leading cases by which the-elementary doctrine of power over the subject of titles to real estate and the application of that doctrine to a case like the one in hand is settled beyond question. That a State has the power, generally speaking, to provide for and protect individual rights to the soil within its confines and declare what shall form a cloud on the title to such soil was recognized in Clark v. Smith, 13. Pet. 195. So, also, it is conclusively established that -when the public interests demand the law may require even a party in actual possession of land and claiming a perfect title to appear before a properly constituted tribunal and establish that title by a judicial proceeding. Such was the method employed by the United States in settling as between itself and claimants under Mexican grants the title to property in California. Barker v. Harvey, 181 U. S. 481; Mitchell v. Furman, 180 U. S. 402; Botiller v. Dominguez, 130 U. S. 238; More v. Steinbach, 127 U. S. 70.

The question of what authority a State possesses over titles to real estate, and what jurisdiction over the subject it may confer upon its courts, received much consideration in Arndt v. Griggs, 134 U. S. 316; It was there held that, even as to ordinary controversies respecting title to land arising between rival claimants, the State possessed the power to provide for the adjudication of titles to real estate not only as against residents, but as against non-residents, who might be brought into court by publication. In the course of the opinion the court said (p. 320):

“It [the State] has control over property within its limits; and the condition of ownership of real estate therein, whether the owner be stranger or citizen, is subject to its rules concerning the holding, the transfer, liability to obligations, private or public, and the modes of establishing titles thereto. It cannot bring the person of a non-resident within its limits — its process goes not out beyond its border^ — but it may determine the extent of his title to real estate within its limits; and for the purpose of such determination may provide , any reasonable, methods of imparting notice. The well-being of every community requires that the title to real estate therein shall be secure, and that there be convenient and certain methods of determining any unsettled questions respecting it. The duty of accomplishing this is local in its nature; it is not a matter of national concern or vested in the general government; it remains with the State; and as this duty is one of the State, the manner of discharging it' must be determined by the State, and no proceeding which it provides can be declared invalid, unless it conflict with some-special inhibitions of the Constitution, or against natural justice.”

Manifestly, under circumstances like those here presented, the principle applies with equal force in. the case-of unknown claimants. Undisclosed and unknown claim-

ants are, to say the least, as dangerous to the stability of titles as other classes. This principle received recognition and was applied in Hamilton v. Brown, 161 U. S. 256, where it was held to be competent for a State to make provision for promptly ascertaining, by appropriate judicial proceedings, who has succeeded to property upon the death of a person leaving such property within the State. It was said (p. 275):

“If such proceedings are had, after actual notice by service of summons to all known claimants, and constructive notice by publication to all possible claimants who are unknown, the final determination of the right of succession, either among private persons, as in the ordinary administration of estates, or between all persons and the State, as by inquest of office or similar process to determine whether the estate has escheated to the public, is due process of law; and a statute providing for such proceedings and determination does not impair the obligation of any contract contained in the grant under which the former owner held, whether that grant was from the State or from a private person.”

The application of the doctrine of governmental power, as just stated, to a condition like the one here in question was aptly pointed out by the Supreme Court of' Illinois in Bertrand v. Taylor, 87 Illinois, 235, where, in considering the Illinois Burnt Record Act, the court said: ■

“It was demanded as a matter of safety in a great emergency. It was not calculated to take any reasonable being by surprise. It was known throughout the civilized world that a large part of the city of Chicago had been destroyed by fire and that the records of courts and the records of deeds were all destroyed. This naturally commanded the attention of all reasonable persons everywhere, and called upon them to attend and see what means would be adopted to mitigate the evils and dangers incident to the destruction. This legislation was not done in a corner, but before the observation of a civilized world. We cannot doubt the power of the general assembly to pass the act.”

The Supreme Court of California, in the Kerrigan case, supra, addressing itself to the same subject, pertinently observed (pp. 313, 314):

“Applying the principles which have led the courts in cases like Arndt v. Griggs, 134 U. S. 316, and Perkins v. Wakeham, 86 California, 580, to sustain judgments quieting titles against non-residents upon substituted service, why should not the legislature have power to. give similar effect to such judgments against unknown claimants where the notice is reasonably full and complete? The validity of such judgments against known residents is based upon the ground that the State has power to provide for the determination of titles to real estate within its borders, and that, as against non-resident defendants or others, who cannot be served in the State, a substituted service is permissible, as being the only service possible. These grounds apply with equal force to unknown claimants. The power of the State as to titles should not be limited to settling them as against persons named. In order to exercise this power to its fullest extent, it is necessary that it should be made to operate on all interests, known and unknown.. As was said by Holmes, C. J., in Tyler v. Judges of the Court of Registration, 175 Massachusetts, 71, in speaking of a statute which, in the particular under discussion, was similar to ours: ‘If it does not satisfy. the Constitution, a judicial proceeding to clear titles against all the world hardly is possible; for the very meaning of such a proceeding is to get rid of unknown as well as known claimants — indeed, certainty against the unknown may be said to be its chief end — and unknown claimants cannot be dealt with by personal service upon the claimant.’ ”

The power exerted by the act being then clearly within the legislative authority, we are brought to consider whether the lawful power was manifested in Such a manner as to cause the act to be repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. And this brings us to the- second proposition heretofore stated, viz.:

The adequacy of the safeguards, which the statute provides.

As no complaint is made concerning the provisions of the statute relating to the designation of and notice to known claimants, we put that subject out of view and address ourselves to. the provisions relating to unknown claimants or claims. The action which the statute authorizes may be brought by “Any person who claims an estate of inheritance, or for life in, and who is by himself or his tenant, or other person, holding under him, in the actual and peaceable possession of any real property” situated in a county where “the public records in the office of a county-recorder have been lost or destroyed, in whole or in any material part, by flood, fire or earthquake.” -In the caption of the complaint the statute requires that the defendants shall be described as “all persons claiming any interest in or lien upon the real property herein described, or any part thereof.” The summons is required to contain a description of the property affected by the suit and to be directed to “all persons claiming any interest in or lien upon the real property herein described, or any part thereof.” The summons is to be published at least once a week for two months, and the defendants are. commanded to appear and answer within three months after the first publication, of thé summons. A copy of the summons is required to be posted in a conspicuous place on each separate parcel of the property described in the complaint within fifteen days after the first publication of the summons. At the time of filing the complaint a notice of the pendency of the action, giving among other things a particular description of the property affected thereby, must be re corded in the office of the recorder of the county in which the property is situated, and it is made the duty of the recorder to enter, “upon a map or plat of the parcels of land, to be kept by him for that purpose, on that part of the map or plat representing the parcel or parcels so described a reference to the date of the'filing of such notice and, when recorded, to the book and page of the record thereof.” In considering the statute we are bound by the construction affixed to it by the Supreme Court of the .State, and therefore treat as embraced within its terms that, which the highest court of the State has declared the statute exacts, either expressly or by necessary implication. In the Kerrigan case, supra, it was held that the result of the provisions of the statute was “to require the complainant to designate and to serve as known claimants all whom, with reasonable diligence, he could ascertain to be claimants,” a construction which, in effect declared that, the statute prohibited the omission of. a known claim or claimant, upon the conception that the rights of such claim or claimant would be foreclosed by the general designation and notice prescribed for unknown claimants. And in Hoffman v. Superior Court, 151 California, 386, where the doctrine of the Kerrigan case was reiterated and applied, the court, after holding that the statute requires the plaintiff in his affidavit to allege in terms “that he does not know and has never been informed” of any adverse claimants whom he has not specifically named, pointed out that failure of the plaintiff to make inquiry or to avail himself of knowledge which would be imputed to him because of facts sufficient to put him on inquiry as to the existence of adverse claims would be available “in any subsequent attack upon the decree, upon the ground that there was extraneous fraud of the plaintiff in making a false affidavit to obtain jurisdiction.”

It is to be borne in mind that it has been settled (Griffith v. Connecticut, 218 U. S. 563, and cases cited) that the Fourteenth Amendment does not operate to. deprive the States of their lawful power., and of the right in the exercise of such power to resort to reasonable methods inherently belonging to the power exerted. On the contrary, the provisions of the due process clause only restrain those arbitrary and unreasonable exertions of power which are not really within lawful state power, since they are so unreasonable and unjust as to impair or destroy fundamental rights.

It is to be observed that the statute not only requires a disclosure by the plaintiff of all known claimants, but moreover at the very outset contains words of limitation that i no one not in the actual and peaceable possession of property can maintain the action which it authorizes. No person can therefore be deprived of his property under the statute unless he had not only gone out of possession of such property and allowed another to acquire possession, or if he had a claim to such property or an interest therein, had so entirely failed to disclose that fact as to enable a possessor to truthfully make the affidavit which the statute exacts of a want of all knowledge of the existence of other claimants than as disclosed in his affidavit. Besides, it -is to be considered that the statute, as construed by the California court, imposed upon the one in possession seeking the establishment of an alleged title the duty to make diligent inquiry to ascertain the names of all claimants. Instead, therefore, of the statute amounting to the exertion of a purely unreasonable and arbitrary power, its provisions leave no room for that contention. On the contrary, we think the statute manifests the careful purpose of the legislature to provide every reasonable safeguard for the protection of the rights of unknown claimants and to give such notice as under the circumstances would be reasonably likely to bring the fact of the pendency and the purpose of the proceeding to the attention of those interested. To argue that the provi sions of the statute. are repugnant to the due process clause because a case may be conceived where rights in and to property would be adversely affected without notice being actually conveyed by the proceedings is in effect to deny the power of the State to deal with the subject. The criterion is not the possibility of conceivable injury but the just and reasonable character of the requirements, having reference to the subject with which the statute deals. The doctrine on this subject was clearly expressed by the Court of Appeals of New York in In re Empire City Bank, 18 N. Y. 199, 215, where, speaking of .the right of a State to prescribe in a suitable case for constructive service, it was said:

“Various prudential regulations are made with respect to these remedies, but it may possibly happen, notwithstanding all these precautions, that a citizen who owes nothing, and has doné none of the acts mentioned in the statutes, may-be .déprived of . his estate without any actual knowledge of the process by which it has been taken from him. If we hold,' as we must, in order to sustain this legislation, that the constitution does not positively require personal notice in order to constitute a legal proceeding due process of law, it then belongs to the legislature to determine in the particular instance whether the case calls for this, kind of exceptional legislation and what manner of constructive notice shall be sufficient to reasonably apprise the party proceeded against of the legal steps which are taken against him.”

And in accordance with this view, the Supreme Court of California, in the 'Kerrigan case, pointed out that the statute furnished all the safeguards for which, in reason, it could have been expected to provide consistently with the condition dealt with. The court said (p. 312):

“Where, as here, the summons describing the nature of the action, the property involved, the name of the plaintiff, and the relief sought, is posted upon the prop erty, and is published in a newspaper for two months, and a ‘Us pendens’ containing the same particulars is recorded in the recorder’s office and entered upon the recorder’s map of. the property, we cannot doubt that, so far as concerns the possible claimants who are not known to the plaintiff, the notice prescribed by the act is as complete and full as, from the nature of the case, could reasonably be expected.”

The case of Ballard v. Hunter, 204 U. S. 241, is instructive on this feature of the case. In that case a judgment of the Circuit Court of Arkansas was affirmed which sustained the validity of a sale of lands for levee taxes. The Arkansas statute authorized the proceedings which had resulted in the salo, upon constructive publication against nón-residents and unknown owners. Lands of Josephine Ballard were sold under the statutory proceeding, she not having knowledge of the existence of the suit or of the fact that the taxes had been assessed against her property. In the course of the opinion the court, speaking through Mr. Justice McKenna, said (p. 261):

“It js said, however, that Josephine Ballard was not made a defendant in the suit, though the records of the county showed that she was an owner thereof. But the statute provided against such an omission. It provided that the proceedings and judgment should be in the nature of proceedings in rem, arid that it should be immaterial that the ownership of the lands might be incorrectly, alleged in the proceedings. We see no want of due process in that requirement, or what was done under it. It is manifest that any criticism of either is answered by the cases we have cited. The proceedings were appropriate to the nature of the case.

“ It should be kept in mind that the laws of a State come under the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment only when they infringe fundamental rights. A law must be framed and judged of in consideration of the practical affairs of man. The law cannot give personal notice of its provisions or proceedings to every one. It charges every one with knowledge of its provisions; of its proceedings it must, at times, adopt some form of indirect notice, and indirect noticé is usually efficient notice when the proceedings affect real estate. Of what concerns or may concern their real estate, men usually keep informed, and on that probability, the law may frame its proceedings; indeed, must frame them, and assume the care of property to be universal, if it would give efficiency to many of its exercises. This was pointed out in Huling v. Kaw Valley Railway & Improvement Company, 130 U. S. 559, where it was declared to be the ‘duty of the owner of real estate, who is a non-resident, to take measures that in some, way he shall be represented when his property is called into requisition; and if he fails to give notice by the ordinary publications which have been usually required in such cases, it is his misfortune, and he must abide the consequences.’ It makes no difference, therefore, that plaintiffs in error did not have personal notice of the suit to collect the taxes on their lands or that taxes had been levied, or knowledge of the law under which the taxes had been levied.”

While we are of opinion that the views just stated demonstrate the want of merit in the contention that the statute, because of the insufficiency of its requirements, was repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment, a consideration of a provision of the general law of California, which by the construction of the Supreme Court of California is incorporated into the statute under consideration, would lead to the same result. Thus, in the Hoffman Case, 151 California, 386, 393, the court said:

“In this connection it is propér to say that in determining whether or not due process of law is afforded, other statutes applicable to the proceeding may be considered. The provisions of § 473 of the Code of Civil Procedure apply in such cases.’ Any person interested in the property and having no actual notice of the decree, may come in at any time within a year after its rendition and by showing that he has not been personally served with process and stating facts constituting a good defense to the proceeding — that is, facts sufficient to show that he has a valid adverse interest in the property — he may have the decree vacated, as to him and be allowed to answer to the merits.”

The right conferred by § 473 of the code, it is to be observed, is an absolute right, although the section declares that the court may impose “such terms as may be just.” Holiness Church v. Metropolitan Church Association (Cal. App.), 107 Pac. Rep. 633; Gray v. Lawlor, 151 California, 352.

Under this construction it might well be held, if it were necessary to do so, as establishing a rule of limitation which it was in the power of the State to prescribe,- in view of the circumstances to which the limitation was made applicable. See Tyler v. Judges, 175 Massachusetts, 71, and State v. Westfall, 85 Minnesota, 437. See also Illinois cases concerning the power to fix a short period of limitation to meet a disaster like the one to which the statute in question relates, collected in Gormley v. Clark, 134 U. S. 346, 347.

These views dispose of all the. contentions .concerning the repugnancy of the statute to the Fourteenth Amendment which we think it necessary to separately consider. In saying this we are not unmindful of a multitude of subordinate propositions pressed in the voluminous brief of counsel and which were all in effect urged upon the Supreme Court of California in the Kerrigan and Hoffman cases and were in those cases adversely disposed of, and which we also find to be without merit. Some of them we briefly refer to. We do not think it is important to determine the precise nature of the action authorized by the statute, since the method of procedure which was prescribed was within the ^legislative competency. So, also, we do not deem it important to discuss what constitutes a judicial proceeding, since the statutory proceeding provided by the act was within the authority of the State to enact, and that it was judicial in character has been expressly determined by the court of last resort of the State. Indeed, not only these, but all the contentions proceed upon á misconception as to the legislative authority of the State and the effect thereon of the due process clause of the Constitution of the United States. The error which all the propositions involve was pointed out in Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, where, speaking by Mr. Justice Moody, the court said:

Due process requires that the court which assumes to determine the rights of parties shall have jurisdiction (citing cases) and that there shall be notice and opportunity for hearing given the parties, (citing cases). Subject to these .two fundamental conditions, which seem to be universally prescribed in all systems of law established by civilized countries, this court has, up to this time; sustained. all state laws, statutory or judicially declared,- regulating procedure, evidence and methods of trial, and held them to be consistent with due process of law.”

3. The adequacy of the proceedings pursued in the case referred to in the certificate.

As there is no claim that fraud, actual or constructive, was employed by Zeiss in obtaining the judgment complained of, and the proceedings conformed to the California statute, the considerations previously stated entirely dispose of this question.

It follows that both of the questions certified must be .answered in the negative.

And it is so ordered.