Court Opinion

ID: 9628942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:34:48.577594+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:13.516496
License: Public Domain

WELCH, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority opinion affirms the trial court on the basis of the following statement in the opinion:
“The finding of the trial court that plaintiff and his privies or grantors had been in adverse, actual, notorious, unbroken, continuous and exclusive possession of the property for a period in excess of fifteen years is sustained by the evidence.”
The finding of the trial court as quoted and approved in the majority opinion is as follows:
*146“The court further finds that the. plaintiff and his privies or grantors have been in adverse, actual notorious, unbroken continuous and exclusive possession of the above described. property under exclusive ownership for the past 31 years”.
Now the case was tried and judgment rendered in the year 1950. Therefore the thirty-one-year period upon which the trial court judgment was based commenced in the year 1919; That was five years before the mortgage here involved was executed.
I observe the statutory limitation on actions herein involved, that is, Title 12 O.S.1951 § 93, Par. 4, which provides as follows:
“An action for the recovery of real property not hereinbefore provided for, within fifteen (15) years.”
And also Title 60 O.S.1951 § 333, which provides as follows:
“Occupancy for the period prescribed by civil procedure, or any law of this State as sufficient to bar an action for the recovery of the property, confers a title thereto, denominated a title by prescription, which is sufficient against all.”
In the body of the opinion I observe this statement:
“The court found that the statute of limitations had commenced to run from the date of the sheriff’s sale in the foreclosure proceedings, and defendants were.barred from asserting title to the property.”
This statement in the opinion does not agree with the quoted findings of the trial court, but in any event, this statement in the opinion overlooks the fact that the sheriff’s sale was not final and was not a complete sale until confirmation by the court. At the sheriff’s auction of the land the highest bidder did not then receive any title to the land or any right to possession of the land or any right to a writ of assistance to be placed in the possession, nor did the bidder then' acquire any cause of action against the occupants, the former ówners of the land. That could only come to the bidder when and after his sale was confirmed, which was done in 1940. There was a long delay or lapse of time between the sheriff’s auction of the land and the time the sale was confirmed and thereby became a complete sheriff’s sale. All the parties knew about that delay, or they were charged with knowledge thereof, and the official court record gave legal notice to every pne as to the pending situation. Therefore it was only in Í940 that the sheriff’s sale purchasers could have acquired any interest or title or cause of action against the former owners of the land.
Note that in Oklahoma a sheriff’s sale in mortgage foreclosure is a judicial sale. It must be both ordered and confirmed by the court. That is true generally as to all judicial sales. 12 O.S.1951 § 686 deals specifically with mortgage foreclosures, and in part reads as follows:
“No real estate shall be sold for the payment of any money or the performance of any contract or agreement in writing, in security for which it may have been pledged or assigned, except in pursuance of a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction ordering such sale. The court may, in the order confirming a sale of land under order of sale on foreclosure or Upon execution, award or -order the issuance of a writ of assistance by the clerk of the court to the sheriff of the county where the land is situated, to place the purchaser in' full, possession of such land * *
This demonstrates there is no right to possession and of course no cause of action as to title or possession- before confirmation. We have held, and quite recently, that such a sale is not complete until confirmation.
Near the beginning of the majority opinion there occurs this statement:
“Primarily the case must turn on the application of the fifteen year .stat- . ute of limitations, Tit. 12 O.S.1951 § 93.”
No one can find any fault with, that statement,. but it can- have no application *147here, as the majority opinion discloses that no cause of action whatever could have accrued until 1940, and the cited section of the statute discloses beyond question that no one of the five paragraphs thereof could possibly apply to this action, except No. 4 which fixes the period of fifteen years. Since no cause of action could arise until 1940, and this action was commenced in the year 1947, and was tried in 1950, no period of fifteen years had expired.
Fifteen years prescriptive title statute is 60 O.S.1951 § 333, supra, and of course it is that statute which was in the mind of the trial court when he based his decision on the occupancy, of this land by the parties and their privies in whose favor he rendered judgment.
Many times this court has discussed the fifteen year statute of limitations and the fifteen year occupancy of adverse parties as barring an action and creating a prescriptive title, but this is the first time this court has made that application where less than ten years elapsed between the accrual of the cause of action and the time when it was asserted in court. Ten years delay or ten years adverse possession has never until now created a fifteen years prescriptive title.
Likewise, this case presents the first judgment ever rendered in this state based upon the legal premise that a mortgagor could hold adverse possession against the mortgagee, and that such adverse possession continued during the pendency of the action for foreclosure of the mortgage.
The majority opinion definitely implies, and I think it holds, that the mortgagor may hold adverse possession against the mortgage foreclosure purchaser on account of the fact that there was long delay in completing the latter stages of the foreclosure action; but no authorities are cited supporting that conclusion, and I have not been able to find any. We have had many long delays in court actions in this jurisdiction. Many of them have occurred in this court. A case might arise in which such delay would give rise to some right to relief under the principles of laches, but with all such delay in any case the action is legally pending and could not be made the basis of any bar of the statute of limitations as here applied.
Note the first paragraph of the syllabus of the majority opinion. It is a correct statement of a sound principle of law. However, it refers to a fifteen-year period and can have no application to this less than ten-year period from accrual of cause of action to the action itself.
Now note the second, paragraph of the syllabus, note .that it is made to apply to land mortgages generally, therefore to all mortgages whether matured or not. Many of the larger mortgages in Oklahoma run more than twenty years from execution to maturity date of the debt, therefore under the law as stated in this syllabus, the heirs of a mortgagor or their grantees might destroy the rights of the mortgagee by fifteen-year occupancy even before the mortgage debt came due. How can that be? On the contrary, is not this the correct rule: That when land is covered by a valid mortgage of record any person who thereafter acquires title to the land in any manner from the mortgagor, either by conveyance from the mortgagor or by inheritance from the mortgagor, or by conveyance from the heirs of the mortgagor, takes title subject to the mortgage and holds possession subject to, not adverse to, the mortgage rights?
Surely for that paragraph of the syllabus to be a true statement of the law it should be limited to apply to mortgages which •had matured, that is, on which a cause of action had accrued. It should not be left wide open to apply generally to all mortgages whether matured or not.
That second paragraph of the syllabus cannot apply here because this is not an action against mortgagees at all. It is an action against purchasers from the purchasers at the mortgage foreclosure sale. True, in this case the original sheriff’s sale purchasers were the same persons who had theretofore been mortgagees, but several years before this suit was commenced they had ceased to be mortgagees and had become sheriff’s sale purchasers of the land itself, and had sold it to the defendant Brewster in this case. So why in this action should we pronounce a rule of law *148for actions against mortgagees, and use that rule as one controlling this action? Here the original sheriff’s sale purchasers were in the same position as would have been any stranger who bought at the sheriff’s sale. After confirmation they were sheriff’s sale purchasers and nothing else.
The record discloses the following statement in the trial court’s written findings of fact and conclusions of law:
“I am of the opinion that the Statutes of Limitation began to run at the date of the sheriff’s sale made by him in 1927 even though the sheriff’s sale had not been confirmed at that time and even though they had no legal right to prosecute an action for the possession of the said lands by securing a Writ of Assistance or otherwise until said sale was confirmed in 1940.”
“This being true, I conclude as a matter of law that the Statute of Limitation has run in favor of Joe C. Herron and that he is entitled to a decree quieting his title in and to said lands and real property hereinabove described.”
Thus it is apparent that the trial court knew that no cause of action accrued to the high bidder at the sheriff’s auction in 1927, and none could accrue until confirmation.
That finding and conclusion of the' trial court seems from' some language in' the opinion to- be the one that is affirmed, but it is a different finding that is quoted in the opinion as if to base this court’s affirmance on that finding quoted in the majority opinion.
Now if the majority is resolute in its determination to affirm, should it affirm the trial court’s conclusion (1) that the adverse possession and therefore the statute of limitations began to run thirty-one years before trial, or in 1919, according to the findings quoted .in the majority opinion? Or (2) that the statute began to run when the sheriff made the sale in 1927, before confirmation, and before any fore- ■ closure ■ sale purchaser could have any cause of action?
It would be much better if the opinion would make it clear which trial court conclusion is affirmed, or when this opinion rules that the statute began to' run in this case. That point is made vexatiously uncertain by the overall language of the opinion, and by the rule as stated in paragraph two of the syllabus.
I respectfully dissent.