Court Opinion

ID: 9443738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:29:08.881004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:35.227568
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Our previous opinion noted, 198 F.2d 812, 818, that the general statement has been made in texts and opinions that any attempted attornment by a tenant to a third party, while in occupancy under his lease, is void. As between the landlord and the tenant themselves, or as between the claims of two landlords in relation to each other, both of whom are usurpers,3 this is the universal rule. But, as our previous opinion pointed out, an examination of the reported cases will show that this general statement does not represent expression which has been made in a consideration and adjudication of the relative legal rights and positions of a legal owner and such an adverse-possession landlord, where the legal owner has protectively entered into a lease with the usurper’s tenant without knowledge of the tenancy relationship, and where the legal owner further, in failing to discover the existence of that relationship and the usurper-landlord’s claim, cannot be said to have been guilty of any lack of diligence in the making of such inquiry or other investigation as the circumstances of the particular situation reasonably would suggest to a prudent person.
The cases have for the most part involved suits by an adverse-possession landlord against his tenant to recover the rent agreed to be paid or to have the tenant turn back the possession of the property to him, in which the tenant has sought to set up another lease or some extraneous right in escape of his tenancy obligation. Some have been situations in which the tenant has undertaken to acquire a claim *244or interest in himself, hostile to that of his landlord, without first having made a surrender. Still others have presented the issue of the superiority of ,the conflicting rights of the adverse-possession landlord and another usurper, who has undertaken to bolster his cause by having the tenant attorn to him or yield up to him the possession of the property.
A few examples will sufficiently serve, I think, to show the setting and the expression which has been involved in the Arkansas cases. One of the earliest decisions of the Arkansas Supreme Court is Simmons v. Robertson, 27 Ark. 50, which was an action by a landlord against his alleged tenant in unlawful detainer. Oh the trial, the plaintiff had requested an instruction, which the court refused to give, that “If the jury believe from the evidence that defendant, Robertson, rented the land in dispute from the plaintiff, Simmons, or his agent, he cannot dispute the title of said Simmons to the land.” On verdict and judgment for the defendant and appeal by the plaintiff, the Court held that the refusal to give the instruction was error. and made this expression: “It seems to us that there are few, if any, propositions of law better settled than that a tenant cannot dispute his landlord’s title, and why the court refused to give the * * * instruction asked by the plaintiff we are unable to see.” 27 Ark. at page 53.
Hughes v. Watt, 28 Ark. 153, at page 154, similarly was a suit by a landlord against his tenant to recover possession, and there the Court said: “ * * * it is not necessary to inquire into title in a suit merely for possession * * * because it does not lie in the mouth of a tenant who has recognized and contracted with one as owner, and attorned to him while using the premises, to deny a title he has thus confirmed, and retain a possession he has enjoyed by the favor of such landlord.”
Burton v. Gorman, 125 Ark. 141, 188 S.W. 561; Casey v. Johnson, 193 Ark. 177, 98 S.W.2d 67, and Bolin v. Drainage District No. 17, 206 Ark. 459, 176 S.W.2d 143, also were suits against tenants by landlords or their privies to recover possession of the leased premises. In the Burton case it was said that a tenant would not be permitted to raise any issue as to his landlord’s title without surrendering possession.
Davis v. Grobmyer, 132 Ark. 11, 199 S.W. 917, was a case where a tenant had taken a lease from a railroad company and later entered into another lease with one who claimed to have paid the taxes upon the property for a number of years under the provisions of Kirby’s Dig. § 5057, but had never been in actual possession and did not have legal title. The payer of the taxes thereafter sued the occupant, as his alleged tenant, in ejectment, and was held not to be entitled to recover. The court termed him an “intruder” on the railroad’s possession' and held that the tenant’s at-tornment to him and his subsequent attempt to oust the tenant on the basis thereof could not be made to affect the railroad’s rights and turn it out of possession. The opinion does not make clear whether the railroad held title to the property or whether it was itself a usurper. There is some intimation that it too was a usurper. In any event, as the court assumes to discuss, there exists no basis in law for any usurper to throw a previous usurper out of possession, and hence the obtaining by such a usurper of an attornment from' the tenant of a previous usurper would be without any substance for legal impact, as a matter of agency, estoppel, or any other principle.
The unreported case of Guinn v. Reed, Miller County Chancery Case No. 8987, decided by an Arkansas trial court,4 seems to have been particularly relied upon by the District Court and also to be heavily leaned upon by the majority opinion here. The District Court said of the Guinn case, 98 F.Supp. at page 743, that “the Court was confronted with a problem of attorn*245ment practically identical with the one now before us”, and the majority opinion declares that the case was one “in which it was squarely held that a landlord’s claim of adverse possession was not affected by his tenant’s recognition of a hostile title.”
To me, the case does not come any •closer to the question here being considered than does Davis v. Grobmyer, supra, •or the other cases which I have discussed. I have not had access to the case, except upon the basis of the facts and quotations set out in the District Court’s opinion, 98 F.Supp. at pages 743 and 744, but from this it would appear that the situation was simply one of attornment by a prior •usurper’s tenant to another usurper. Thus, the District Court’s opinion says that the defendant, Reed, had taken possession of the property “with intent to acquire title ■thereto”, and that the plaintiff, Guinn, who was the holder of a void tax title, was attempting to claim that the subsequent -attornmerit to him of Reed’s tenant had given him adverse possession of the property and that such holding by him through the tenant had vested him with limitation title. But as I observed in relation to Davis v. Grobmyer, supra, the attempt of a subsequent usurper to deprive a previous ¡usurper of possession is without any substance to give it legal basis.
As to the soundness of all the Arkansas cases which have been referred to, in the legal situations which they have involved, I do not think that there can be any question — although this of course is not a matter of our concern. I am, however, not .able to read these cases as rationally implying that the Arkansas Supreme Court, has intended, or could be expected to declare as a matter of considered holding, that the relationship of landlord and tenant should be regarded as being legally endowed with absolute sanctity and unqualified supremacy, over all persons, all rights, all statuses, and all principles, that have existence in the entire field of the law, to the extent that may be necessary to afford complete protection to a landlord— 'be he legal owner or be he usurper, and be his capacity of landlord notorious or be it undiscoverable — against everything that his tenant may possibly say or do, while the relationship is in existence.
The effect of the holding of the District Court and of the majority here is to declare that to be the Arkansas law. Necessarily, if no attornment by a tenant to a third party can have any possible validity or effect, whether or not the third party has legal rights in the property subject generally to the protection of the law, and whether or not the existence of the larid-lord-and-tenant relationship is unknown and undiscoverable, then, of course, no act of the tenant which is of lesser legal stature, such as a declaration, an acknowledgment, or other conduct in relation to the property, either in the general community or toward the third party, can be recognized as being legally capable of affecting the landlord’s tortious interest.
That would mean, for one thing, that adverse possession once established in favor of a secret landlord, through his tenant’s taking of possession under the lease, would not, even though the relationship was unknown and undiscoverable, be affected by the tenant’s subsequent declaration to the world at large, or by his acknowledgment to the legal owner, that he was not assuming to hold the property in hostility to the owner’s rights and was willing to get off at any time that the owner might desire to have him do so. Under the holding of the District Court and the majority opinion, this would not at all affect the landlord’s secret usurpative interest, as a matter of adverse possession law, estoppel, or anything else. Thus, the District Court made the finding and conclusion in the present situation that the possession of the tenant was still “hostile” and “adverse”, after his attornment to the legal owner, although the evidence is devoid of any factual element, except the previous lease, as a basis for attributing that reality to the subsequent holding.5 Contrarily, however, the record *246indicates that actually, from the time the tenant entered into a lease with the legal owner, his attitude of occupancy was one of hostility and of derogation toward the existence of any interest in his previous landlord. To me, the definition made by the Arkansas Supreme Court in numerous cases of the realities necessary'to create title by adverse possession do not permit the viewpoint to be harbored that those realities will be given' a constructive existence in situations where a tenant-agent goes into possession for another -but the landlord’s identity and relationship are not made a matter of community notoriety or of suggested existence, naturally prompted inquiry, and ready discoverability. ’
Again, the absolute legal nullity which it is here held exists as to any attornment made by a tenant to a third party, no matter who the third party is, what his legal interest may be, or under what circumstances the attornment is made — and so also necessarily the lack of ability of any declaration, acknowledgment or conduct whatsoever on the part of the tenant to affect his landlord’s interest — must inescapably be given the further significance that no purchaser of property, any more than a legal owner, can be protected by any inquiry which he makes of the tenant as the party in possession or by any lease which he makes with the tenant, regardless of the fact that the tenant conceals the fact of his existing tenancy relationship and that there is nothing in the situation which reasonably suggests the existence of the usurper-landlord and his relationship to the property. That is utterly unreconcilable with the broad doctrine of notice, inquiry and estoppel laid down by the Arkansas Supreme Court, to which the District' Court and the majority opinion apparently have given no consideration. The Arkansas cases have said generally many times that, where actual knowledge does not exist in a legal situation, the law makes the question one of notice; that notice is equivalent to knowledge as to all facts in such a situation that a diligent inquiry would disclose; and that notice itself is to be regarded as consisting of such elements in the situation involved as would reasonably put a man of ordinary intelligence on inquiry. See e. g. Trinity Royalty Co. v. Riggins, 199 Ark. 939, 136 S.W.2d 473; Dean v. Freeze, 213 Ark. 264, 209 S.W.2d 876; Kellogg-Fontaine Lumber Co. v. Cronic, 219 Ark. 170, 240 S.W.2d 872. The Arkansas Supreme Court has never said that situations of landlord-and-tenant relationship are wholly outside the operation of this fundamental catch-all doctrine, and, as a matter of common sense and plain justice, I can see no basis for believing that the Court would artificially refuse to apply it to the existing legal rights of an owner or purchaser of property as against adverse-possession claimants of landlord-and-tenant relationships, both secret and open.
All of these considerations, as well as-the fact that the view here expressed has also been the result reached by those-courts which have specifically dealt with the question involved, some of which cases, are set out in our previous opinion, 198 F.2d at pages 819-821, leave me with the firm conviction that the Arkansas law is not the literal absolutism declared by the District Court and the majority opinion, but that it is and can only be regarded as being, as held in our previous opinion, that the principle that a tenant may not dispute his landlord’s title does not operate to prevent the continuity of the hostile possession of an adverse-claimant landlord from! being broken by an attornment of his tenant to the legal owner (or a purchaser of the property) where the situation is one-in which the latter is without any knowledge, or other notice than the fact -of occupancy itself, of the relationship between the tenant and the adverse claimant, and' where he cannot be said to be guilty of failing to make such inquiry as ordinary diligence in the circumstances of the particular situation would reasonably suggest.
We did not in our previous opinion,- nor do I attempt to here, consider what in*247quiry, if any, may have been called for, on the part of plaintiff’s predecessor or of plaintiff himself as a subsequent purchaser, by the circumstances of the situation, or whether such inquiry, if any, as might be called for was made. Under the holding of the District Court and of the majority here, that question would be immaterial, and the evidence does not appear to have been developed in relation to it on the trial. It would of course have been a proper matter for development and consideration under the remand of our previous opinion.
As to the other question covered by our previous opinion — whether, if the landlord’s holding was broken by the timber-cutting operations of 1937, as the trial court assumed without deciding, the possession taken by the tenant thereafter had to be regarded as a permissive and not a hostile entry for purposes of adverse possession law, in view of his having the two leases, with one just as much in force as the other — I shall not here repeat the discussion of the previous opinion but merely incorporate it by reference, 198 F.2d 812, as a part of this dissent.
Perhaps this case may serve to bring the immediate question which has been dealt with into the test tube of some of our Law Review laboratories.

. I use the term “usurper” here in the legal sense of anyone whose possession is wrongful as against the legal owner.

. I do not pause to consider what convincing manifestation of state law can ordinarily be assumed to be reflected by the undocumented expression, in one individual case, of a single state trial judge, among the many separate judges in a state trial-court system.

. Neither the District Court nor the ina-jority opinion has purported to find that the landlord-and-tenant relationship or the landlord’s claim to the property was a matter of notoriety or of knowledge of any nature in the community at any time. *246And the recording of the lease, as referred to in the opinion of tli^ majority, was not made in the county where the land was located but in another county, so that it never gave any constructive notice to anyone.