Opinion ID: 198725
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Quiet Title Action

Text: The defects in the land sale came to light in 1984, when Jean Stevenson Clark sued the United States pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2409(a) to quiet title to what she claimed was her share in the eight acres. Soon, others intervened in the lawsuit, all claiming that they too were heirs of Edmund the Elder and thus owned a share of the property that Elizabeth had sold to the government. The trial court (Skinner, J.) divided the interests in the property based on its reading of the Massachusetts law governing descent and distribution. See Cadorette v. United States, 1990 WL 149979 (No. 84-2428-S) (D. Mass Sept. 18, 1990). The United States appealed, arguing that the trial court misapplied Massachusetts law. While the appeal was pending, the United States filed a complaint in condemnation pursuant to 40 U.S.C. 257, seeking to acquire whatever interest in the land that it did not own already.On appeal, we concluded that the trial court had properly distributed the interests of two of the four original heirs to the eight acres, Charles and Richard Sr. See Cadorette v. United States, 988 F.2d 215 (1st Cir. 1993). That part of the judgment was final. But we vacated the trial court's decision to distribute the interest of the other two original heirs, Betsy I and Edmund II, solely to those litigants who were presently before it. We observed that the district court had learned very little about these two lines and that the record contained no evidence of any significant effort to locate, or to provide notice to, the descendants of Betsy I or Edmund II. Id. at 219, 221. Given the sparsity of information, the district court had inappropriately presumed that Betsy I and Edmund II's lines had died out, and it had been particularly inappropriate to presume that they had died out during the one seven-year period under which the parties before the court would be entitled, under Massachusetts law, to their entire interest in the land. See id. In Cadorette, we declined to determine precisely how Massachusetts law ought to apply because the government had since filed a condemnation action. Id. at 222. We ruled that the initiation of condemnation proceedings mooted the quiet title dispute, and thus displaced any further need for the trial court to determine the interest of Betsy I and Edmund II in the quiet title action. By filing a condemnation action, the government would acquire the fifty percent interest in the eight acres that had passed through Betsy I and Edmund II upon payment of just compensation. See id. at 222-226. We ruled that upon a further search for heirs of Betsy I and Edmund II, the district court should determine afresh whom to compensate for those shares. Id. at 222.