Case ID: us-ct-cl_47/html/0637-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice McKenna", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

MARY N. HUSSEY, ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF HANNAH S. CRANE ET AL., v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [44 C. Cls. R., 324; 222 U. S. R., 88.]
    
      On the claimant's Appeal,
    
    In 1850 the legislature of California passes an act creating an estate in community in the property of husbands and wives; and in 1855 the supreme court of California holds, when construing the statute, that one-half of the estate of a husband or wife vests in fee simple in the survivor and is not subject to testamentary disposition. After the enactment but before the decision a husband dies, and his executor sells his real property in California, conveying the whole estate and paying the purchase money to the widow, she being devisee under the will, all parties being in ignorance of the law as subsequently declared by the supreme court of the State. Notwithstanding the Government paid the full value of the estate and that the widow received and accepted the purchase money and rested twelve years without disavowing the sale and conveyance by the executor, and notwithstanding the fact that her grantee paid to the widow only $100 for the conveyance of her communal estate, Congress, in 1905, enact that if this court “ shall find, that said parties acquired a valid title to said real property as claimed, said court shall atoará the said parties the marlcet value of the undivided one-sixth of said property at the time possession 
      
      was taken of it by the United States.” The principal questions involved, are whether this court must regard as stare deeisis a decision of the supreme court of California, holding that the will of the testator did not dispose of his widow’s one-half interest in the communal property, and whether the claimant’s grantor acquired a valid title from the widow to her communal estate by or under her conveyance to one King in 1865.
    The court below decides:
    I. A judgment in ejectment against the custodian of public property is not a judgment against the United States. The Government will not be concluded by such a judgment and may proceed by a bill in chancery to quiet its title or may bring an action of ejectment, in which its title may be judicially determined.
    II. Where an executor conveyed all the estate in real property in California though a moiety of it was in law the community estate of the widow, and she, being also devisee under the will, received the purchase money and rested twelve years without objection or action, all parties having acted in ignoi’ance of law and in the belief that the entire estate was subject to testamentary devise, it must be held that she ratified the act of the executor and that her grantee did not acquire a valid title to her community estate in the property within the intent of the Jurisdictional Aot February 25, 1905 (33 Stat. L„ p. 815).
   The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.

Mr. Justice McKenna

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court November 20, 1911.