Court Opinion

ID: 9808620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:44:22.318938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:11.697094
License: Public Domain

Clark, J.
(dissenting): As to the person erroneously supposed to be deceased, the leave granted to sell his real estate to malre assets is necessarily a nullity. Pie was not a party to the proceeding nor in privity and can in no wise be bound by the judgment. As against him the judgment is a nullity, the Court is careful to emphasize in Scott v. McNeill, 154 U. S., 34, 46, and I find no case that goes beyond that. The cleric has general jurisdiction of the subject matter of winding up dead men’s estates, and his finding of fact in a particular case that a man is dead, is binding and conclusive on all parties to that judgment, when unappealed from and unreversed. The parties do not give jurisdiction by consent, but the, judicial finding *54by a court- having jurisdiction to make it, that a man is or is not dead, is just like any other finding by a court having jurisdiction of any given class of cases, conclusive as to all who are parties to the action, and persons buying at a sale under such judgment have the right to be protected from any claim in opposition to the tenor of the judgment by those who were parties to that action. • The finding of the court may be incorreet-as to the facts, and its rulings erroneous in law, but both as to the law and the facts the decision of the court, having general jurisdiction of such subject matter, is conclusive on the parties. These defendants were content with the court’s adjudication that their ancestor was dead, they did not appeal therefrom, they were benefited to the extent of the purchase money paid by these plaintiffs, and it does not lie in their mouths now to say that such adjudication is incorrect either as to the law or the facts. If a man stands by at an execution or mortgage sale of property, sold as another’s, and by his words and conduct makes no claim, but permits the purchasers to pay the purchase money, he is estopped after-wards to claim such property as his own. For a stronger reason, are these defendants estopped, who not only acquiesced in the findings of fact and conclusions of law in ordering a sale of this land but who were benefited by the application of the purchase money.
The decree divested no interest in nor title to the land possessed by the ancestor who was erroneously supposed to be dead. But it should estop the plaintiff's ever thereafter to claim as against the purchaser under the decree, any interest in land which had been adjudicated, (they being parties) to belong to them subject only to their ancestor’s debts. I have found no case anywhere which will controvert this proposition. Many cases use the gen- • eral expression that such judgments are nullities, bu^ *55Alien examined it will be seen that they are held nullities as against the ancestor, who not being a party to the judgment, could not be bound by it.
The general jurisdiction of this class of cases rested in the court making the decree of sale in "this case. Its adjudication of the fact that the ancestor of the plaintiffs was dead was one it had legal authority to make, and must pass upon in all such cases, and fits decision upon that fact, like any other decision either upon the facts or the law, unappealed from, is conclusive as'to such fact or ruling, as to all parties to the action. If judgments of the courts upon matters within their general jurisdiction do not bind even the parties thereto, but can be upset at any time thereafter 'by showing by other witnesses that the facts were otherwise, then the stability of judgments and the reliance to be placed in titles acquired under them, will be rudely shaken. The death of some witnesses or the failing memory of others will become sufficient, even as to parties to the action, to set aside all judgments based upon the finding of the courts upon the fundamental facts which justify the assumption of jurisdiction in any given case.