Court Opinion

ID: 9670731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:24:45.984183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:06.197767
License: Public Domain

TATE, Justice
(concurring in denial).
I adhere to my view that the present litigation does not squarely present to us the question of overruling California Co. v. Price, 225 La. 706, 74 So.2d 1 (1954). However, in view of my brother Barham’s concurring opinion, it may not be inappropriate *963for me to state that, if and when the question is presented to this court, I concur with his views that the Price decision should be overruled.
My essential reasoning in this regard is contained in the forceful dissent of Chief Justice Fournet to the Price decision, 74 So. 2d 15:
“ * * * I am convinced the holding in the majority does violence to the basic and fundamental principles upon which the holding in the comparatively recent decision of Miami Corporation v. State, 186 La. 784, 173 So. 315 [1936], is predicated, that is, that the title to the bottoms of navigable beds of water, and particularly those that form a part or an arm of the sea, are unsusceptible of private ownership, i. e., cannot be owned by private individuals; and, therefore, the majority ruling in effect overrules the holding in the Miami case that when land bordering such streams becomes submerged under the waters thereof and, as a result, forms a part of its bed, the owner is divested of his title thereto and it thereupon becomes vested in the state for the benefit of and in trust for the people as a whole.
“Viewed in the light of this public policy that is established by codal articles that have been interpreted and reaffirmed in an unbroken line of jurisprudence for more than a century — and which is also reflective of a rule that is firmly grounded in the law and jurisprudence universally obtaining in all of the states — I have no doubt that if this were an original test of legislative intent in adopting Act No. 62 of 1912, the statute could, despite its all-embracive language, very easily be construed to mean that the legislature did not intend thereby to include within its purview the beds of navigable streams, and particularly those- connected with or forming a part of or being an arm of the sea, but only such lands as the state would, in the ordinary course of events, have available for sale on the open market. In my opinion, such a construction is logical and sound, leading to no absurd consequences.”
Insofar as it is suggested that we should not disturb a “rule of property” represented by this single decision of our closely divided court, almost universally criticized by the commentators, our earlier expression in Miami Corp. v. State, 186 La. 784, 173 So. 315, 320 (1936), under similar circumstances, is applicable: “In Louisiana, this court has never hesitated to overrule a line of decisions where they establish a rule of property when greater harm would result from perpetuating the error rather than from correcting.”
I thus join with the views expressed by Justices Hawthorne, Hamlin and Sanders (the latter two still members of this court) in their dissent from the denial of certiorari at State v. Cenac, 241 La. 1055, 132 So.2d 928, 930, 936 (1961).
*965If and when this court is squarely faced with the necessity of overruling California Co. v. Price, there is much merit in the suggestion of Justice Hamlin in Cenac, 132 So.2d 936, that those who have incurred expenditures as the result of mistaken reliande upon our Price decision should recover any good faith and reasonable costs of acquisition and development expended by them, such reasonable good faith expenditures to be a charge against any revenues derived by the State from its property thus reclaimed.
Further, it seems to me there may be merit in concluding that such possessors in good faith should not be required to account to the true owner (the State) for revenues they may have derived from the State’s property up until the time the State makes formal claim, for its restitution, whether such revenues be technically “fruits” or not. We would thus be according such possessors the benefits equivalent to those usually accorded possessors in good faith. See La.Civil Code Article 3543.
It should probably also be noted there will be a special problem of res judicata as to those who have litigated the question and whose ownership of this inalienable property of the State is now recognized by a definitive and probably unassailable judgment.
For the reasons noted, I therefore concur, with Justice Barham’s views, as expressed by his concurring opinion; however, I do not believe the Price question is actually before this court in this litigation.