Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/222/483/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 01:58:06+00:00

Document:
Under the law of Florida, as declared by its highest court, where there is a variance between the title of a bill as enrolled and promulgated and the title of the act as shown by the journals, the latter will control.
While the judgment of the highest court of the state in a case may not be res judicata of the case at bar, the parties and land affected not being the same, if in deciding it the court announces what the law of the state is and whether a particular statute was or was not validly enacted under the state constitution, this Court will follow it as an authoritative announcement of the law of the state.
Whether a particular state law has been passed by the legislature in such manner as to become a valid law under the state constitution is a state, and not a federal, question, and federal courts must follow the adjudications of the state court.
Although the decision of the state court holding a particular law to be unconstitutional may not have been rendered until after rights based thereon had arisen, if the highest court simply followed a rule laid down before such rights had arisen, the decision in the later case is binding upon the federal courts.
Where the state courts have held that the journals of the legislature can be examined to determine whether an act has been validly passed, it is the duty of one proposing to rely upon the act to examine the journals, and he cannot plead ignorance of the law as an excuse for not doing so.
This Court cannot hold that an act is constitutional under the state law because the defect on which the state court declared it to be unconstitutional occurred through mistake, when the state court has passed on that question and held the act unconstitutional even under such condition.
Although the case may be a hard one, those who expend money on the faith of an invalid act cannot obtain redress from the courts, but must apply to the legislature.
An act of the State of Florida incorporating a railroad company and granting it aid having been held unconstitutional by the highest court of that state because the journal showed that it was an act to incorporate only, and only one subject can be embraced in one act, the federal courts are bound to follow that decision, and to hold that Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund had no power to convey land under that act, and that the grantees have no title to any of the land claimed thereunder.
The facts, which involve the title to land in Florida under an act of the legislature of that state, are stated in the opinion.
The complainant, Richard G. Peters, through mesne conveyances, asserts an equitable title to some two hundred thousand acres of swamp or overflowed lands in the State of Florida, being a part of the congressional grant of September 28, 1850, to the State of Florida. By state legislation, the title to the lands so granted was vested in the governor of the state and four other state officials and their successors in office, as trustees, for the purposes set forth in an Act of June 6, 1855, entitled, "An Act to Provide for and Encourage a Liberal System of Internal Improvement in This state."
"SEC. 9. That the State of Florida, for the purpose of aiding the construction of said railroad, its branches and extensions, hereby grants unto said company 10,000 acres of land for each mile of railroad it may construct, of the lands granted to the State of Florida, under the Act of Congress of September 28th, 1850, and which are commonly known as the swamp and overflowed lands, said lands to be deeded to the said company by the trustees of the internal improvement fund, as fast as each five miles of said road or any of its branches are graded, cross-tied, and rails laid thereon."
Fund a plot and survey of the lands located by it in pursuance of a certificate given it by the Trustees, as herein provided, the said Trustees shall set apart and upon demand execute unto said corporation, its successors and assigns, a deed conveying unto it the lands described in said plot and survey, from the swamp and overflowed lands granted to the State of Florida by the Act of Congress of September 28, 1850; Provided, That nothing in this act contained shall make the State of Florida liable by reason of any deficiency there may exist in the public lands belonging to the state under and by virtue of the Act of Congress of September 28, 1850."
By the eighteenth section of said act, it was provided that the railway company should receive the same quota of land on account of the construction of any part of the projected line by the Atlantic, Suwanee River & Gulf Railroad Company, theretofore incorporated for the same general purpose, upon receiving a conveyance of such constructed railroad.
subsequently conveyed the same to the defendant the Southern Timber & Naval Stores Company, who, it is alleged, also had full notice of the prior right of the said Atlantic, Suwanee River & Gulf Railway Company, and its assigns, including the present complainant.
The prayer of the bill is that the Southern Timber & Naval Stores Company be adjudged to hold same in trust for complainant, and required to convey same to him. In the alternative, the bill asks a decree against the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund for the value of said lands, or for the money received by the Trustees for said lands, and for general relief.
The bill was dismissed upon demurrer.
"Each law enacted in the legislature shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected therewith, which subject shall be briefly expressed in the title."
"An act to incorporate the Atlantic, Suwanee River & Gulf Railway, to grant such corporation certain privileges, and to aid the construction thereof. "
"A bill to be entitled 'An Act to Incorporate the Atlantic, Suwanee River & Gulf Railway Company.'"
Thus, the title, as shown by the journals, gives no notice that the bill grants public lands as an aid to construction, but purports to be no more than an incorporating act, while the act, as officially promulgated, bears a title expressing its contents.
But when there is a variance between the title of a bill as enrolled and promulgated and the title of the act as shown by the journals, the latter will control, under the express decision of the highest court of the State of Florida. Wade v. Atlantic Lumber Co., 51 Fla. 628.
In that case, the Atlantic Lumber Company asserted title to certain swamp lands located under certificates issued to the Atlantic, Suwanee River & Gulf Railway Company, by authority of this Act of May 24, 1893, which lands had been deeded to the defendant Neil G. Wade by the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund. The defendant Wade demurred to the bill upon the ground that the Act of May 24, 1893, the sole source of the superior title asserted by the Atlantic Lumber Company, was invalid insofar as it included a land grant, because the title of the act did not express that purpose of the bill.
The Florida court took judicial notice of the journals of the Florida Legislature, and finding the journal title to be as set out above, held the title of the act insufficient under the constitution to embrace a grant of public lands in aid of the company incorporated.
determining the invalidity of the Act of May 24, 1893, as against parties not then before the court. It is enough for the purposes of this case that we shall hold that case to be an authoritative announcement of the law of Florida in these respects: first, that under the constitution of that state, an act entitled an act to incorporate a particular railway company does not bear a title sufficiently broad to embrace a grant of public land in aid of the construction of the authorized railway, and second that, when the journals speak and show a variance between the journal title and the title of a bill as enrolled and promulgated, the journal title must control.
The question as to whether a particular law has been passed in such manner as to become a valid law under the constitution of the state is a state, and not a federal, question. Courts of the United States are therefore under obligation to follow the adjudications of the courts of the state whose law is in question. South Ottawa v. Perkins, 94 U. S. 260; Leeper v. Texas, 139 U. S. 467; Wilkes County v. Coler, 189 U.S. 511.
The only authority which the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund had for the issuance of the certificates now held by the appellant, or for their location upon the public land of the state, or the execution of a deed to the locator, proceeds from this act. If that enactment be invalid, the Trustees had no authority to issue such certificates, and no authority to make the deed which was demanded for lands located by means of such certificates. Yet this very enactment has been declared invalid by the highest court of the state upon an examination by that court of the journals of the legislature, showing a variance between the title of the bill as enrolled and the title shown by the journal. It would be a most remarkable occurrence if now, upon the same journals, we should hold that the bill had a sufficient title and was a valid law.
Lumber Co. were raised by demurrer. But the question of whether the enactment was a valid law is a judicial question. In the case of the State of Florida v. Brown, 20 Fla. 407, a case decided ten years before this act was passed, it was held that the courts would examine the journals of the legislature, and would hold a law invalid if from such journals it appeared that the law in question had not been constitutionally enacted. See also State ex Rel. v. Green, 36 Fla. 154. In view of the cases cited, we find the Florida court saying, in Wade v. Atlantic Lumber Co., that "this court is firmly committed to the holding that, when the journals speak, they control."
The suggestion that the rights of the appellant or his assignors arose before the decision in Wade v. Atlantic Lumber Co. and that the case is therefore one in which this Court should exercise an independent judgment under the authority of such cases as Burgess v. Seligman, 107 U. S. 20, is without merit.
by demurrer to the declaration. This Court is bound to know the law without taking the advice of a jury on the subject. When once it became the settled construction of the Constitution of Illinois that no act can be deemed a valid law unless, by the journals of the legislature, it appears to have been regularly passed by both houses, it became the duty of the courts to take judicial notice of the journal entries in that regard. The courts of Illinois may decline to take that trouble unless parties bring the matter to their attention; but, on general principles, the question as to the existence of a law is a judicial one, and must be so regarded by the courts of the United States."
for the purpose of sustaining an act, it would be equally admissible to overthrow an act, and cannot be permitted."
We need not deal with the argument that the grant operated to pass the title to the lands located, without more, since the invalidity of the act disposes of every right which might otherwise proceed from it.
Neither does the bill state any facts which authorize us to hold that the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund made any contract in reference to granting aid in the construction of the Atlantic, Suwanee River & Gulf Railway by virtue of their general power under the Act of September 28, 1850, vesting title to the state swamp lands in them. Every act averred to have been done by them was but a step in pursuance of the power which was sought to be conferred by the Act of May 24, 1893. Their subsequent conveyance of the lands upon which the certificates issued by them to the railway company was in pursuance of a sale made by them to Neil G. Wade, and their refusal to make a deed of the same lands to the railway company, or its assigns, was based upon the invalidity of the enactment under which such deed was claimed. They incurred neither personally nor officially any responsibility for their conduct in the matter.
The case of the railway company and their assigns is a hard one. They went forward under an enactment which was invalid, and have made large expenditures upon the faith of a law which they assumed was valid. But the consequences are not remediable save by an appeal to the legislative power. The proceeds of the sale of the lands located under the void certificates to Wade are not charged with any lien or equity by any of the facts stated in the bill.
* Original docket title Peters v. Gilchrist.

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