Opinion ID: 1178008
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the marketable record title act may operate against a municipality

Text: The City maintains that the Act impermissibly operates against it as a statute of limitations. We cannot agree. The Act's conceptual underpinnings distinguish it from a statute of limitations. The latter bars the owner's remedy when his suit is not filed within the prescribed period. [16] It may be tolled and, unless affirmatively pleaded, it is deemed waived. Marketable title legislation, on the other hand, has for its target the right itself. It operates to extinguish any claim or interest, vested or contingent, present or future, unless the claimant preserves his claim by filing a notice within a thirty-year period. If a notice is not filed, the claim is lost. [17] Interests are thus extinguished because claimants failed to record, not because they failed to sue. One whose interest is extinguished by the terms of the Act may be one who never has had an accrued cause of action. [18] The purpose of the Act is to simplify and facilitate land title transactions by allowing persons to rely on a record title, subject only to certain statutory limitations. This is accomplished by eliminating those ancient defects and stale claims against the title to real property which are not properly preserved  to the end that the period of record search may be limited to relatively recent instruments. To hold as suggested by the City would frustrate the Act's beneficial effect and substantially defeat the legislative objective. Legislative intent to include municipalities within the coverage of the Act is clearly ascertainable from its text. Unlike those states which except from the Act's operation all interests of the state, [19] Oklahoma specifically declares it immaterial whether the titleholder is an entity that is natural or corporate ... private or governmental. [20] In the face of this explicit language, all interests  public and private  are subject to extinguishment.