Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/198/458.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 03:23:17+00:00

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The plaintiff in error, Margaret Cunnius, now Margaret Smith, whom we shall hereafter refer to as Mrs. Smith, prior to and at the time of the passage of this act, was domiciled in the state of Pennsylvania. In virtue of her right of dower in certain real estate of her husband, which passed to him from his deceased mother's estate, she became entitled to the annual interest during her life on the sum of $569.61. This debt was [198 U.S. 458, 461] assumed by john M. Cunnius, who acquired the real estate from which the right of dower arose, and was in turn assumed by the Reading school district, in consequence of its acquisition from John M. Cunnius of the property. The school district paid the interest as it accrued to Mrs. Smith, at her domicil in the city of Reading, up to the 1st of April, 1888. In that year she left her domicil in the city of Reading, and for nearly nine years-up to March, 1897-she had not been heard from. At that date her only son, who resided in Reading, alleging the absence of his mother for the period stated, and the fact that she had not been heard from, and the consequent presumption of her death, made application to the register of wills, under the statute to which we have just referred, for letters of administration. After the reference of the matter to the orphans' court, as required by the statute, and the making of the publication, and compliance with the other requisites of the statutes, the letters of administration which the statute authorized were granted. Under the authority thus conferred the administrator collected from the Reading school district the arrears of interest which had accrued on the right of dower of Mrs. Smith, from the date of the last payment made to her before her disappearance on April the 1st, 1888, down to the time of the appointment of the administrator. The administrator gave the school district a receipt and discharge. In 1899 Mrs. Smith sued the Reading school district in the court of common pleas of Berks county to recover the arrears of interest which had been paid during her absence to the administrator appointed by the orphans' court. And the proof in the suit developed that at the time the proceedings against her as an absentee were initiated, and when the administrator was appointed, she was living in Sacramento, California. The school district relied for its defense upon the payment of the interest made to the administrator, and the discharge which that officer had given under the law. Mrs. Smith asserted that the proceedings in the state court and the receipt of the administrator furnished no protection [198 U.S. 458, 462] to the school district, because, as she was alive when the proceedings for administration were taken in the state court, those proceedings and the law which authorized them were repugnant to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. She, moreover, contended, even although there was power in the state to provide by law for the administration of the property of an absentee, the particular law in question was repugnant to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, as it did not provide for adequate notice, and because the law failed to furnish the necessary safeguards to give it validity. The case went to a jury upon legal points being reserved.
The trial court decided that Mrs. Smith was entitled to recover, because the Pennsylvania statute did not provide essential notice, and was, therefore, repugnant to the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. The superior court, to which the case was taken, affirmed the action of trial court on the ground that, as Mrs. Smith was alive when the proceedings to asminister her estate as an absentee were had, that administration was void, and the statute authorizing it was repugnant to the 14th Amendment. 21 Pa. Super. Ct. 340. The supreme court of Pennsylvania, on appeal, reversed the judgments of the court below, and decided that the statute was a valid exercise of the police power of the state, and, therefore, both as to form and substance, was not repugnant to the 14th Amendment. 206 Pa. 469. 98 Am. St. Rep. 790, 56 Atl. 16.
Mr. Caleb J. Bieber for plaintiff in error.
[198 U.S. 458, 464] Messrs. Frederick W. Nicolls (by special leave) and William Rick for defendant in error.
[198 U.S. 458, 467] In their ultimate aspect the assignments of error and the propositions based on them all rest on the assumption that the state of Pennsylvania had no jurisdiction over the person or property of the absentee, and therefore the proceedings for the appointment of the administrator and all acts done by him were void and subject to collateral attack. But to uphold this contention, in a broad sense, would be to deny the possession by the various states of powers which they obviously have the right to exert. That the debt due the absentee by the school district, resulting from the establishment of her dower, was within the jurisdiction of the state authority, is clear. It would undoubtedly have been subject to administration under the laws of Pennsylvania had the absentee been in fact dead. Wyman v. Halstead (Wyman v. United States), 109 U.S. 654, 656 , 27 S. L. ed. 1068, 1069, 3 Sup. Ct. Rep. 417; Sayre v. Helme, 61 Pa. 299; Mansfield v. McFarland, 202, Pa. 173, 174, 51 Atl. 763. The debt was certainly subject to taxation, and, being so subject, had it been taxed, the state would have had power to provide remedial process for the collection of the tax. Savings & Loan Soc. v. Multnomah County, 169 U.S. 421, 428 , 42 S. L. ed. 803, 805, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 392; Bristol v. Washington County, 177 U.S. 133 , 44 L. ed. 701, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 585. Moreover, it would have been in the power of the state to subject the debt to attachment at the instance of a creditor of the absentee. Harris v. Balk, 198 U.S. 215 , 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 625, 49 L. ed.--. And that the law [198 U.S. 458, 468] of Pennsylvania would have authorized such an attachment is also clear. Furness v. Smith, 30 Pa. 520, 522. It may not also be doubted that the state of Pennsylvania had authority to enact an applicable statute of limitations.
Provisions similar in character to those of the Code Napoleon were incorporated in the Civil Code of Louisiana of 1808, under the head of absentees, in book 1 of that code, defining the status of persons, and such provisions have been in force from that day to the present time. La. Civil Code, art. 47 et seq. The provisions of that code on the subject were referred to by this court in Scott v. McNeal, 154 U.S. 34, 41 , 38 S. L. ed. 896, 900, 14 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1108. Under the law of England, as stated in that case, a presumption of death arose from an absence of seven years without being heard from; and whilst it is true, as we shall hereafter have occasion to say, that such presumption was not conclusive, and was rebuttable, nevertheless the very fact of the presumption occasioned by absence, irrespective of the force of the presumption, was a manifestation of the power to give legal effect to the status arising from absence.
As the preceding statement shows that the right to regulate the estates of absentees, both in the common and civil law, has ever been recognized as being within the scope of governmental authority, it must follow that the proposition that the state of Pennsylvania was wholly without power to legislate concerning the property of an absentee is without merit, unless it be that the authority of a state over the subject is restrained by some constitutional limitation. That the Constitution of Pennsylvania does not put such a restriction is foreclosed by the decision of the supreme court of Pennsylvania in this case. But it is insisted, conceding that the state of Pennsylvania had power to provide for the administration of the property of an absentee, yet that authority could not [198 U.S. 458, 472] be exerted without violating the due process clause of the 14th Amendment if the administrative proceeding, brought into play under the exercise of the authority, is made binding upon the absentee if it should subsequently develop that he was alive when the administration was initiated. To sustain this proposition numerous decisions of state courts of last resort are relied upon, which are enumerated in the margin, and special reliance is placed upon the decision of this court in Scott v. McNeal, 154 U.S. 34, 41 , 38 S. L. ed. 896, 900, 14 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1108. We are of opinion, however, that the cases relied upon, with one or two exceptions, hereafter to be noticed, are inapposite to this case. The leading cases were reviewed in Scott v. McNeal, and their inapplicability to the present case will therefore be demonstrated by a brief consideration of Scott v. McNeal.
'The local law on the subject, contained in the Code of 1881 of the territory of Washington, in force at the time of the proceedings now in question, and since continued in force by article 27, 2, of the Constitution of the state, does not appear to us to warrant the conclusion that the probate court is authorized to conclusively decide, as against a living person, that he is dead, and his estate therefore [198 U.S. 458, 474] subject to be administered and disposed of by the probate court.
True it is that there are some general expressions found in the opinion (p. 50, L. ed. p. 903, Sup. Ct. Rep. p. 1114), which, if separated from the context of the opinion, might lead to the conclusion that it was held that a state was absolutely without power to provide by a special proceeding for the administration and care of the property of an absentee, and to confer jurisdiction on its courts to do so, irrespective of the fact of death. But these general expressions are necessarily controlled by the case which was before the court, and by the context of the opinion, which makes it [198 U.S. 458, 475] clear that it was alone decided that under a law giving jurisdiction to probate courts to administer the estates of deceased persons, even although a rebuttable presumption existed as to death after a certain time, that if such presumption was subsequently rebutted by the proof of the fact of life, that the court, whose authority depended upon death, was devoid of jurisdiction.
We have said that two of the cases relied upon would be separately noticed. Those cases are Carr v. Brown, 20 R. I. 217, 38 L. R. A. 294, 78 Am. St. Rep. 855, 38 Atl. 9, and Clapp v. Houg, 12 N. D. 600, 65 L. R. A. 757, 98 N. W. 710. In the first case there was a statute of Rhode Island providing for administration under the presumption of death after an absence of seven years, and it was decided that the statute was void. The opinion leads to the view that the conclusion of the court was primarily based upon the construction that the statute did not create a conclusive presumption conferring jurisdiction in the event the absentee was alive, and not dead. In the second case there was also a statute of the state of North Dakota, but the court held it to be void, because of the inadequacy of the notice for which it provided. There are, in both of the cases, expressions tending to the view that the state was without power to provide by special legislation for the administration of the property of an absentee. In so far, of course, as these views were rested upon the state Constitution, we are not concerned with them. In so far, however, as they intimate that, by the operation of the 14th Amendment, the states are deprived of power to legislate concerning the estates of absentees, we do not approve them.
The error underlying the argument of the plaintiff in error consists in treating as one two distinct things,-the want of power in a state to administer the property of a person who is alive, under its general authority to provide for the settlement of the estates of deceased persons, and the power of the state to provide for the administration of the estates of persons who are absent for an unreasonable time, and to enact reasonable regulations on that subject. The distinction between the [198 U.S. 458, 476] two is well illustrated in Pennsylvania, for in that state, prior to the enactment of the statute in question, it had been expressly decided that a court of probate, as such, was absolutely wanting in jurisdiction to administer the estate of a person who was alive, simply because there existed a presumption which was rebuttable as to the fact of death. This is also aptly illustrated by the law of Louisiana. In that state, as we have seen, provisions have existed from the beginning for the administration of the estates of absentees as distinct from the power conferred upon the courts of probate to administer the estates of deceased persons. In this condition of the law, under an averment of death, an estate was opened in a probate court of Louisiana, and administered upon. A question as to the validity of that administration subsequently arose in Burns v. Van Loan, 29 La. Ann. 560, 563. As the proceedings were probate proceedings not taken under the statute providing for the administration of the estates of absentees, the supreme court of the state of Louisiana declared them to be absolutely void. As it cannot be denied that, in substance, the Pennsylvania statute is a special proceeding for the administration of the estates of absentees, distinct from the general law of that state providing for the settlement of the estates of deceased persons, and as, by the express terms of the statute, jurisdiction was conferred upon the proper court to grant the administration, it follows that the supreme court of Pennsylvania did not deprive the plaintiff in error of due process of law within the intendment of the 14th Amendment.
2d. It remains only to consider the contention that even although there was power to enact the statute, it is nevertheless repugnant to the 14th Amendment, because it fails to provide notice as a prerequisite to the administration which the statute authorizes, and because of the absence from the statute of essential safeguards for the protection of the property of the absentee which is to be administered. Let it be conceded, as we think it must be, that the creation by a state law of an arbitrary and unreasonable presumption of death [198 U.S. 458, 477] resulting from absence for a brief period, would be a want of due process of law, and therefore repugnant to the 14th Amendment. Let it be further conceded, as we also think is essential, that a state law which did not provide adequate notice as prerequisite to the proceedings for the administration of the estate of an absentee would also be repugnant to the 14th Amendment. Again, let it be conceded that if a state law, in providing for the administration of the estate of an absentee, contained no adequate safeguards concerning property, and amounted, therefore, simply to authorizing the transfer of the property of the absentee to others that such a law would be repugnant to the 14th Amendment. We think none of these concessions are controlling in this case. So far as the period of absence provided by the statute in question, it certainly cannot be said to be unreasonable. So far as the notices which it directs to be issued, we think they were reasonable. As concerns the safeguards which the statute creates for the protection of the interest of the absentee in case he should return, we content ourselves with saying that we think, as construed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the provisions of the statute do not conflict with the 14th Amendment.

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