Field v. Evans

675 S.W.2d 3, 1983 Ky. App. LEXIS 370
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedDecember 16, 1983
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 675 S.W.2d 3 (Field v. Evans) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Field v. Evans, 675 S.W.2d 3, 1983 Ky. App. LEXIS 370 (Ky. Ct. App. 1983).

Opinion

WHITE, Judge.

This action appeals from the overruling of a CR 60.02 motion by the Daviess Circuit Court. We affirm.

In 1977 a quiet title action was filed by heirs of J.W.M. Field’s estate. This concerned a 28-acre tract of land which had been purchased in 1945 from the estate’s trustee and held pursuant thereto for the ensuing years by Frances W. Evans. The matter was interrelated with another from which it was separated in 1979 for trial. No action was taken for two-and-a-half years by the Fields to prosecute the case; therefore, in 1981 the Daviess Circuit Court dismissed it with prejudice. This was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, and discretionary review was denied by the Supreme Court.

[4]*4A CR 60.02 motion was subsequently offered in which it was asserted:

The nonresident defendants herein are indispensable parties to this action in that they all have an interest in the real estate which is the subject matter of this action; and the Court has no jurisdiction to enter a final judgment herein for the reason that the nonresident defendants were served by constructive service of process under CR 4.04(8) and such service will not support a personal judgment.

(Certain persons with interests comparable to the plaintiffs below had been included as defendants to compel their joinder. It was anticipated that once jurisdiction over them was assumed, the Court would properly realign the parties.)

It was further argued that KRS 454.210 (the long-arm statute) rather than CR 4.04 (the warning order procedure) was the proper tool for obtaining personal jurisdiction over the nonresidents. (We do not challenge the proposition that for personal jurisdiction long-arming is required. The question, as will be discussed below, is whether this is a matter in personam rather than in rem, i.e. was constructive service satisfactory.) The motion was overruled, hence this appeal.

A present shift of attorneys has brought a refining of the CR 60.02 arguments rejected below. We are asked first to accept that this was an in personam matter, thereby requiring personal jurisdiction. Accepting this, we are told that the “missing” (constructively served) parties were indispensable. Finally, it is asserted that a defect in personal jurisdiction resulting in an adjudication in the absence of an indispensable party is a defect in subject matter jurisdiction, a defect which, in contrast with personal jurisdiction, cannot be waived and can be raised at any point in the proceedings, even by the party who originally invoked the jurisdiction of the Court. Mansfield, Coldwater & Lake Michigan Ry. v. Swan, 111 U.S. 379, 4 S.Ct. 510, 28 L.Ed. 462 (1884); Louisville & Nashville R.R. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149, 29 S.Ct. 42, 53 L.Ed. 126 (1908), and American Fire & Casualty v. Finn, 341 U.S. 6, 71 S.Ct. 534, 95 L.Ed. 702 (1951). Interspersed therein is the additional argument that the quiet title statute, KRS 411.120, is void due to a lack of a sufficient notice provision.

Concerning this last matter, it is cited that the statute carries no provision for notice, the historic assumption being that this was an in rem matter which could be handled through the warning order procedure of CR 4.04 or 4.05. It is argued, however, that notice distinctions between in rem and in personam actions were abolished by Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank and Trust, 339 U.S. 306, 70 S.Ct. 652, 94 L.Ed. 865 (1950). The absence, therefore, of an in personam notice provision is asserted to render KRS 411.120 unconstitutional resulting in a void judgment herein.

In response to this argument, raised for the first time on the appeal from the denial of the CR 60.02 motion, we would refer appellants to CR 24.03 in which it is clearly stated:

When the constitutionality of an act of the General Assembly affecting the public interest is drawn in question in any action to which the State or an officer, agency, or employe thereof is not a party, the movant shall serve notice of the motion upon the Attorney General.

See Blake v. Woodford Bank & Trust Company, Ky.App., 555 S.W.2d 589 (1977), in which the Court refused to consider the issue of constitutionality when the Attorney General had not received notice.

Nothing in the record indicates that the Commonwealth’s Attorney General has been given notice of the pendency of this present action. This defect is just as egregious as appellants would have the alleged failure of notice to the nonresidents to be.

We would, however, also refer appellants to Richardson v. Brunner, Ky., 356 S.W.2d 252, 253 (1962), in which under a CR 60.02 motion it was also alleged that [5]*5the applicable statute was unconstitutional and the resulting judgment void:

This ground is without merit because it is the rule in Kentucky, and the virtually unanimous rule of other jurisdictions, that a judgment based upon or rendered under an unconstitutional statute is not void. Commonwealth ex rel. Dummit v. Jefferson County, 300 Ky. 514, 189 S.W.2d 604, 167 A.L.R. 512; 30 Am.Jur., Judgments, sec. 19, p. 172. So Richardson’s motion under CR 60.02 could not put in issue the question of the constitutionality of the statute.

Returning to the three-pronged general argument before us, in order to establish this as an in personam rather than an in rem action, appellants argue enthusiastically that because of the absence of the element of possession required under KRS 411.120, this more properly was a declaration of rights matter under KRS 418.040, for which personal jurisdiction and joinder of all interested parties is required. KRS 418.075, Herbert C. Heller & Co. v. Hunt Forbes Const. Co., 222 Ky. 564, 1 S.W.2d 970 (1928).

This attack upon the characterization of the case is one first raised at the CR 60.02 level although it was certainly available below. (Appellants urge that because the nonresidents were not personally before the Court, the argument was not available to them. Their presence is addressed infra.)

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Bluebook (online)
675 S.W.2d 3, 1983 Ky. App. LEXIS 370, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/field-v-evans-kyctapp-1983.