Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/524/38/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 03:51:47+00:00

Document:
UNITED STATES v. BEGGERLY ET AL.
In 1979, the United States sued respondents and others to quiet title to land it sought for a federal park, contending that respondents did not have clear title because the Government had never patented the disputed land after acquiring it as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Government officials searched public land records during discovery, but reported to respondents that they found no proof of a grant to a private landowner. A 1982 settlement agreement quieted title in the Government's favor in return for a payment to respondents. In 1994, respondents sued to set aside the settlement agreement and obtain damages, claiming that they had evidence showing that the land had been granted to a private owner before the Louisiana Purchase, but the District Court concluded that it had no jurisdiction to hear the case. The Fifth Circuit reversed, finding two jurisdictional bases: (1) the suit was an "independent action" to set aside the settlement under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b); and (2) the Quiet Title Act (QTA or Act). In reaching the second conclusion, the court found that the QTA's 12-year statute of limitations was subject to equitable tolling and therefore suit was not barred by the fact that respondents had known about the Government's claim since 1979. The court then vacated the settlement agreement and instructed the District Court to quiet title in respondents' favor.
Held: The Fifth Circuit had no jurisdiction over respondents' suit.
full disclosure to the District Court regarding the land grant obviously does not approach this demanding standard. Pp.42-47.
(b) Equitable tolling is not available in a QTA suit. Such tolling is not permissible where it is inconsistent with the relevant statute's text. The QTA's express 12-year statute of limitations runs from the date the plaintiff or his predecessor in interest "knew or should have known" of the United States' claim. 28 U. S. C. § 2409(g). Thus, the Act has already effectively allowed for equitable tolling. See Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89, 96. Given this fact and the QTA's unusually generous limitations period, extension of the statutory period would be unwarranted. Pp.47-49.
114 F.3d 484, reversed and remanded.
REHNQUIST, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. STEVENS, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which SOUTER, J., joined, post, p.49.
Paul R. Q. Wolfson argued the cause for the United States. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Waxman, Deputy Solicitor General Schiffer, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, Martin W Matzen, William B. Lazarus, John D. Leshy, and Margaret P. Fondry.
Ernest G. Taylor, Jr., argued the cause for respondents.
With him on the brief were Robert M. Arentson, Jr., and Nancie G. Marzulla.
court's ancillary jurisdiction, relating back to the Adams litigation, and on the Quiet Title Act (QTA). 28 U. S. C. § 2409a. We hold that respondents were not entitled to relief on either of these grounds.
The land in dispute between the United States and respondents is located on Horn Island. Situated in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 13 miles southwest of Pascagoula, Horn Island is currently within the State of Mississippi. It was, at various times during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, controlled by France, Britain, and Spain. It is part of the territory that came under the control of the United States as a result of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1950, Clark Beggerly, respondents' predecessor-ininterest, purchased color of title to two tracts of land on Horn Island at a tax sale in Jackson County. Beggerly paid $51.20 for one 626-acre tract. He and a friend also purchased a second tract for $31.25. Beggerly retained 103 acres upon a later division of this second tract.
In 1971, Congress enacted legislation authorizing the Department of the Interior to create the Gulf Islands National Seashore, a federal park on lands that include Horn Island. 16 U. S. C. § 459h. The legislation authorized the Secretary of the Interior to acquire privately owned lands within the proposed park's boundaries. § 459h-1. The National Park Service (NPS) began negotiating with respondents to purchase the land. Before any deal could be completed, however, the NPS learned that the United States Government had never patented the property. Believing that this meant that respondents could not have had clear title, the NPS backed out of the proposed deal.
continued to search for evidence of a land patent that supported their claim of title. In 1991 they hired a genealogical record specialist to conduct research in the National Archives in Washington. The specialist found materials that, according to her, showed that on August 1, 1781, Bernardo de Galvez, then the Governor General of Spanish Louisiana, granted Horn Island to Catarina Boudreau. If the land had been granted to a private party prior to 1803, title presumably could not have passed to the United States as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. Respondents believed that the Boudreau grant proved that their claim to the disputed land was superior to that of the United States.
Armed with this new information, respondents filed a complaint in the District Court on June 1, 1994. They asked the court to set aside the 1982 settlement agreement and award them damages of "not less than $14,500 per acre" of the disputed land. App. 26. The District Court concluded that it was without jurisdiction to hear respondents' suit and dismissed the complaint.
"(1) a judgment which ought not, in equity and good conscience, to be enforced; (2) a good defense to the alleged cause of action on which the judgment is founded; (3) fraud, accident, or mistake which prevented the defendant in the judgment from obtaining the benefit of his defense; (4) the absence of fault or negligence on the part of the defendant; and (5) the absence of any adequate remedy at law." 114 F.3d 484, 487 (CAS 1997).
of limitations, which begins to run from the date the plaintiff knows or should have known about the claim of the United States. 28 U. S. C. § 2409a(g). The Court of Appeals noted that respondents knew about the Government's claim for more than 12 years before it filed this suit, but concluded that the 12-year statute was subject to equitable tolling and should be tolled in this case.
Satisfied as to its jurisdiction, the Court of Appeals then addressed the merits. Relying on the Boudreau grant, the court concluded that the "United States has no legitimate claim to the land [and that] the validity of the Beggerlys' title is a legal certainty." 114 F. 3d, at 489. It therefore vacated the settlement agreement and remanded the case to the District Court with instructions that it enter judgment quieting title in favor of respondents. One judge dissented. We granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 1038 (1998), and now reverse.
The Government's primary contention is that the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that it had jurisdiction over respondents' 1994 suit. It first attacks the lower court's conclusion that jurisdiction was established because the suit was an "independent action" within the meaning of Rule 60(b). The Government argues that an "independent action" must be supported by an independent source of jurisdiction, and, in the case of a suit against the United States, an independent waiver of sovereign immunity. Whereas the District Court had jurisdiction over the original Adams litigation because the United States was the plaintiff, 28 U. S. C. § 1345, there was no statutory basis for the Beggerlys' 1994 action, and the District Court was therefore correct to have dismissed it.
"(b) Mistake; Inadvertence; Surprise; Excusable Neglect. On motion the court, upon such terms as are just, may relieve a party or his legal representative from a judgment, order, or proceeding taken against him through his mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect. The motion shall be made within a reasonable time, but in no case exceeding six months after such judgment, order, or proceeding was taken. A motion under this subdivision does not affect the finality of a judgment or suspend its operation. This rule does not limit the power of a court (1) to entertain an action to relieve a party from a judgment, order, or proceeding, or (2) to set aside within one year, as provided in Section 57 of the Judicial Code, U. S. C., Title 28, § 118, a judgment obtained against a defendant not actually personally notified." Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 60(b) (1940).
1 Rule 60(a) dealt then, as it deals now, with relief from clerical mistakes in judgments.
scribed in these rules or by an independent action." Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 60(b).
The new Rule thus made clear that nearly all of the old forms of obtaining relief from a judgment, i. e., coram nobis, coram vobis, audita querela, bills of review, and bills in the nature of review, had been abolished. The revision made equally clear, however, that one of the old forms, i. e., the "independent action," 2 still survived. The Advisory Committee notes confirmed this, indicating that "[i]f the right to make a motion is lost by the expiration of the time limits fixed in these rules, the only other procedural remedy is by a new or independent action to set aside a judgment upon those principles which have heretofore been applied in such an action." Advisory Committee's Notes, supra, at 787.
2 This form of action was also referred to as an "original action."
3 The authorities that the Advisory Committee cited in its notes accompanying the 1946 amendment to the Rule list Pacific as an example of this cause of action. Moore & Rogers, Federal Relief from Civil Judgments, 55 Yale L. J. 623, 656 (1946); 3 J. Moore & J. Friedman, Moore's Federal Practice 3257, n. 12 (1938).
named several other Missouri citizens as defendants in its bill seeking relief from the prior judgment.
"On the question of jurisdiction the [subsequent] suit may be regarded as ancillary to the [prior] suit, so that the relief asked may be granted by the court which made the decree in that suit, without regard to the citizenship of the present parties .... The bill, though an original bill in the chancery sense of the word, is a continuation of the former suit, on the question of the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court." Id., at 522.
Even though there was no diversity, the Court relied on the underlying suit as the basis for jurisdiction and allowed the independent action to proceed. The Government is therefore wrong to suggest that an independent action brought in the same court as the original lawsuit requires an independent basis for jurisdiction.
This is not to say, however, that the requirements for a meritorious independent action have been met here. If relief may be obtained through an independent action in a case such as this, where the most that may be charged against the Government is a failure to furnish relevant information that would at best form the basis for a Rule 60(b)(3) motion, the strict i-year time limit on such motions would be set at naught. Independent actions must, if Rule 60(b) is to be interpreted as a coherent whole, be reserved for those cases of "injustices which, in certain instances, are deemed sufficiently gross to demand a departure" from rigid adherence to the doctrine of res judicata. Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U. S. 238, 244 (1944).
"According to the averments of the original petition for injunction ... the judgments in question would not have been rendered against Mrs. Marshall but for the use in evidence of the letter alleged to be forged. The case evidently intended to be presented by the petition is one where, without negligence, laches or other fault upon the part of petitioner, [respondent] has fraudulently obtained judgments which he seeks, against conscience, to enforce by execution." Id., at 596.
4 We therefore need not address the additional requirement that evidence of the Boudreau grant would have changed the outcome of the original action. See, e. g., Pickford v. Talbott, 225 U. S. 651, 657 (1912).
to name [the United States] as a party defendant in civil actions to adjudicate title disputes involving real property in which the United States claims an interest." Block v. North Dakota ex rel. Board of Univ. and School Lands, 461 U. S. 273, 275-276 (1983). The QTA includes an express 12-year statute of limitations, which begins to run from the date upon which the plaintiff's cause of action accrued. An action under the QTA "shall be deemed to have accrued on the date the plaintiff or his predecessor in interest knew or should have known of the claim of the United States." § 2409a(g).
The Court of Appeals acknowledged that the Beggerlys had known about the Government's claim to the land since at least 1979, more than 12 years before they filed this action in 1994. It concluded that the suit was not barred, however, because the QTA's statute of limitations was subject to equitable tolling, and that, "in light of the diligence displayed by the [respondents] in seeking the truth and pursuing their rights," equity demanded that the statute be tolled in this case. 114 F. 3d, at 489. In our view, the Court of Appeals was wrong in deciding that equitable tolling is available in a QTA suit.
nature of the QTA's limitations time period, extension of the statutory period by additional equitable tolling would be unwarranted. This is particularly true given that the QTA deals with ownership of land. It is of special importance that landowners know with certainty what their rights are, and the period during which those rights may be subject to challenge. Equitable tolling of the already generous statute of limitations incorporated in the QTA would throw a cloud of uncertainty over these rights, and we hold that it is incompatible with the Act.
apply in such an unlikely hypothetical situation. The Court need not (and, therefore, properly does not) address that quite different type of case. Accordingly, I join the Court's opinion without reservation.

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