Court Opinion

ID: 9808337
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:34:57.232634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:26.608193
License: Public Domain

Stacy, C. J.,
dissenting: The decision in this case, as I understand it, is put upon the ground that the deed of gift from Mrs. A. E. George to her son, Samuel Hairston, is void because not registered within two years after its making, and that the Legislature is without power, following a hiatus of one year five months and twenty-nine days after it was declared void under the terms of O. S., 3315, to authorize its registration and render it valid as between the parties by the curative or extending *287act of 1924. I respectfully dissent from this position, for the reasons so clearly stated by Ruffin, J., in Jones v. Sasser, 14 N. C., 378: “The Legislature has certainly the power to enlarge the time for registration, and to pronounce its effect, and if to them it seem good, the courts must execute their will. From time to time, acts giving further time for registration have been passed; and in each, deeds of gift, and indeed all conveyances, except mortgages and deeds of trust, are expressly included; and it is enacted that they shall be as good and valid as if they had been proven and registered within the time before allowed by law. . . . Acts of this character have always received a literal construction; in fact, they are susceptible of none other. The only exception is the case of Scales v. Fewell, 10 N. C., 18, in which there was an hiatus of one year between the extending acts of 1818 and 1821, and during the interval rights vested in other persons. The Court thought the last act was not intended to defeat such vested rights. But in every other case deeds registered at ever so remote a period have been held, by force of the new registry acts, to be as operative as if registered within the periods prescribed by the acts of 1715 or 1806, or any other general statute.”
It will be observed that in the case of Scales v. Fewell, above mentioned, the Court held the bill of sale, there registered after the time required for its validity under the act of 1715, good as between the parties, by virtue of the enabling act of 1821, subject only to intervening vested rights of third persons. Hall, J., speaking of the effect of the extending act, said: “I think that that act comprehended and validated the registration of the deed in question as to all future transactions, yet I do not think that it divested rights (of third persons) under' the execution which had vested before that time.”
The case of Robinson v. Barfield, 6 N. C., 391, is also cited for the position that a deed by a feme covert, not privately examined as required by the act of 1751, could not be validated by a subsequent act of the Legislature. This case was correctly decided, because in the meantime the feme covert diéd, and vested rights intervened. The case of Barrett v. Barrett, 120 N. C., 127, on the other hand, where no vested rights of third persons had intervened, is directly opposite: “The Legislature has power to pass, repeal or modify the laws regulating the manner of executing, proving or recording conveyances, and the exercise of such power to cure defective compliance with former statutes cannot be an interference with vested rights as between the parties to such instruments. Tatom v. White, 95 N. C., 453, 459. It only becomes so when third parties have acquired rights which would be impaired by the act which is intended to cure the defective execution, probate or registration. . . . It is competent for the Legislature to provide what mode of *288probate shall he valid, and when it does so it can affect past as well as future probates, except that the rights of third parties, claiming prior to the validating act, cannot be divested. Retrospective legislation is not necessarily invalid.”
To like effect is the decision in Steger v. Building Asso., 208 Ill., 236, where a mortgage deed, void for want of proper probate, was validated by subsequent statute, the Court saying: “The Legislature may ratify and confirm any act which it might lawfully have authorized in the first instance, where the defect arises out of the neglect of some legal formality and the curative act interferes with no vested rights.” U. S. Mortg. Co. v. Gross, 93 Ill., 483.
“If the thing wanting or which failed to be done, and which constitutes the defect in the proceedings, is something the necessity for which the Legislature might have dispensed with by prior statute, then it is not beyond the power of the Legislature to dispense with it by subsequent statute. And if the irregularity consists in doing some act, or in the mode or manner of doing some act, which the Legislature might have made immaterial by prior law, it is equally competent to make the same immaterial by a subsequent law.” Cooley’s Const. Lim. (7 ed.), p. 531.
The Supreme Court of the United States, in Mattingly v. District of Columbia, 97 U. S., 687, speaking of the power of the Legislature in such cases, tersely states the same principle, as follows: “It may, therefore, cure irregularities, and confirm proceedings which, without the confirmation, would he void because unauthorized, provided such confirmation does not interfere with intervening rights.”
See, also, Fibre Co. v. Cozad, 183 N. C., 600; Anderson v. Wilkins, 142 N. C., 157; Janney v. Blackwell, 138 N. C., 437; Lowe v. Harris, 112 N. C., 472; Board of Education v. Comrs., 183 N. C., 300.
The last sentence of the quotation made by the Court from Justice Walker’s opinion in Dew v. Pyke, 145 N. C., 300, is very significant: “This may be considered as a legislative construction of the words 'shall be registered within two years after its execution,’ to the effect that if the instrument is not so registered it shall not be evidence, unless the time for registration is extended and a new authority to register it is thereby given.”
There is a distinction made in some of the cases between the force and effect of an act which undertakes to validate a deed, void ab initio, and one which simply extends the time for registering a deed, but for which it would be declared void under the statute requiring its registration. Dever v. Cornwell, 10 N. D., 123, 6 A. & E. Enc. of Law (2 ed.), 940; 24 A. & E. Enc. of Law (2 ed.), 111; Cooley’s Const. Lim. (7 ed.), 528 et seq.
*289But it is tbe uniform holding, for example, that the invalidity of a mortgage or conveyance of the homestead exemption, executed by the husband alone, may be cured by a subsequent act of the Legislature, if no third persons have acquired vested rights in the land prior to such enactment. Wildes v. VanVoorhis, 15 Gray (Mass.), 139; note, 45 A. L. R., p. 436. In so validating a deed, the Legislature is only giving effect “to the act of the parties according to their intent,” says the Supreme Court of Arkansas in the case of Sidway v. Lawson, 58 Ark. 117.
The status of unregistered deeds and those registered under extension acts is thus succinctly stated in Phifer v. Barnhart, 88 N. C., 333 (second and third head-notes) :
“2. The bargainee in an unregistered deed has a legal title which,’ though incomplete, cannot be defeated by the mere act of the bargainor in executing another deed to a third party, without notice and whose deed is registered.
“3. Although such deed cannot be given in evidence until registered, and does not therefore convey a perfect legal title, yet, when registered, it relates to the time of its execution, and the title bcomes complete.”
These conclusions are supported by numerous authorities cited in the opinion, and the case itself has been followed and cited with approval in a number of later decisions. See Shephard’s Citations and Allen’s Eeported & Cited Cases, 1926.
Speaking to the question in Tooley v. Lucas, 48 N. C., 146, Nash, C. J., said: “To the legislative department of the government, belongs the power to enact laws, by which the people are to be governed, and to the judiciary, the right to expound them. While acting within the scope of their legitimate authority, their will is to be obeyed; none have a right to disobey it. Where the language of an act is plain and perspicuous, the act must speak for itself, unless its enactment transcends the power of the Legislature. In this case the Legislature has left no doubt upon the question presented to us. 'All sales of slaves shall be in writing, attested by at least one credible witness, or otherwise shall not be deemed valid; and all bills of sale of slaves shall within twelve months after the making thereof, be proved in due form, and recorded; and all bills of sale, and deeds of gift, not authenticated and perpetuated in manner by this act directed, shall be void and of no force whateverEev. Stat., ch. 37, sec. 19. I need not refer to the proviso in that section. In the succeeding section provision is made for the registration of such conveyances. Here, there is no ambiguity; no room for construction. If not authenticated and perpetuated as directed, that is, duly proved and recorded as directed, the conveyance is declared not to be deemed valid, *290but to be void and of no effect. So important is this enactment, that from session to session of the Legislature, it is an invariable practice to pass a law enlarging the time for proving all such conveyances. If a hiatus occurs in the link of this chain of acts, and a subsequent act should be passed, the deed may be proved and authenticated under the latter, but when so proved and authenticated, it has no relation back; so that an execution against the bargainor may be levied upon the property contained in it. Scales v. Fewell, 10 N. C., 18.”
In 12 C. J., 1091, the law on the subject of curative acts is summarized as follows: “Deeds, probates, or other instruments void because of lack of registration or defective registration may be made valid by subsequent legislation as between the 'parties, but not for the purpose of impairing rights acquired by third persons before the passage of the statute.”
I think the act of 1924 is valid, and that, under it, the deed in question is good as between; the parties. The fact that Mrs. George, in the meantime, had executed a will, devising the property to others, ipso facto vested no right in them, and cannot affect the present suit, for she was living at the time of the passage of the extending act, and under the law, as now written, a will -speaks and takes effect as if it had been executed immediately before the death of the testator, unless a contrary intention shall appear by the will. C. S., 4165.