Court Opinion

ID: 9417729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:33:28.524303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:48.980481
License: Public Domain

Mb. Justice Brown
dissenting.
Had Tucker not been made a party to the bill at all, and the court had attempted to dispose of his rights to the land in question, upon the sale under the foreclosure proceedings, there could be no doubt that it would be treated as an attempt to deprive him of his property without due process of law, and that such sale would have been invalid as against him, his heirs or vendees, under the Fourteenth Amendment.
This is in substance exactly what is claimed in this case. The bill averred broadly that he was not made a party at all, but the court, putting its own construction upon the foreclosure proceedings, which were made an exhibit to the original bill, decided that he was. Whether he was bound individually by the proceedings against him in his representative capacity —in other words, whether he individually was a party defendant to the bill — is beside the question. It is sufficient that he is averred not to have been, that a construction of the Constitution was necessarily involved, and that *81the position of the plaintiff in that connection is not a frivolous one, or wholly destitute of foundation. Chicago Life Ins. Co. v. Needles, 113 U. S. 574.
That it requires us to put a construction upon the pleadings in the foreclosure suit does not militate against this position, as we have repeatedly held in analogous cases, where a contract is claimed to have been impaired by state legislation, that we would put our own construction upon such contract, and then inquire whether it had been impaired. Jefferson Bank v. Skelly, 1 Black, 436, 443; New Orleans Water Co. v. Louisiana Sugar Co., 125 U. S. 18, 38; Wilmington & Weldon Railroad v. Alsbrook, 146 U. S. 279, 293; Mobile & Ohio Railroad v. Tennessee, 153 U. S. 486, 492.
It seems to me this case should have been determined upon its merits, and I therefor dissent from the opinion of the court.