Court Opinion

ID: 9601829
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:50:01.947047+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:01:06.925587
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in result:
The dispositive question to be answered here is whether the 1947 reformation-of-deed default judgment on publication service alone, entered in Roger Mills County, is void on the face of the record proper [roll] as that term is defined in 12 O.S.1971 § 704.1 If our answer be in the affirmative, the judgment was subject to a collateral attack in the suit under review since a facially void judgment may be set aside at any time.2 In case of our negative answer, appellant [Alpine] no longer can avoid the judgment’s binding force as the limitations period had run.3
Alpine attributes fatal defect in the judgment roll to the fact that the 1926 deed— the subject-matter of the 1947 reformation suit — bore on both sides of the instrument the mailing address of the defendant therein, Union Royalty Company, a trust, [Union]. This, Alpine asserts, contradicts, on the very face of the judgment roll, the allegations in the non-mailing affidavit to the effect that plaintiff was unable with due diligence to ascertain Union trustees’ whereabouts for the purpose of serving them with process. In short, Alpine urges that serving Union [via its trustees] by publication alone was “facially” violative of due process.4
Alpine overlooks that the 1926 deed in question was not attached to the petition. Its incorporation into the petition was sought by means of reference to the place [book and page] where it appeared in the county deed records. Before the enactment of 12 O.S.1971 § 305.1,5 in 1953, a recorded instrument could not be incorporated into a pleading by means of mere reference and without physical annexation thereto.6
*536Because the 1926 deed in question cannot be considered part of the judgment roll in the 1947 reformation suit, the judgment therein is impervious to a collateral attack.
Since Alpine does not assert that our time limitations on attacking and vacating judgments void in fact but not void facially violate due process — state or federal — that issue need not be reached here.7
I concur in result for reasons substantially different from those which form the underpinning for the court’s decision.
I am authorized to state that IRWIN, V. C. J., and WILLIAMS, J., concur in these views.

. Recodified as 12 O.S.Supp.1972 § 32.1.

. 12 O.S.1971 § 1038.

. Scoufos v. Fuller, Okl., 280 P.2d 720 [1955].

. Myers v. Purdy, 108 Okl. 147, 234 P. 638 [1925]; Ross v. Thompson, 174 Okl. 183, 50 P.2d 385 [1935]; Bomford v. Socony Mobil Oil Co., Okl., 440 P.2d 713 [1968]; see also, Schroeder v. City of New York, 371 U.S. 208, 83 S.Ct. 279, 9 L.Ed. 255 [1962].

. It is provided by the cited statute as follows: “From and after the passage of this Act in all civil cases whereby it is necessary to incorporate, in the pleadings, facts concerning instruments of record affecting real estate, that such incorporation may be made by reference to the date of such instrument, and the book and page number where recorded in lieu of affixing a copy of the same to such pleadings.”

. Incorporation into a pleading by means other than physical annexation thereto is alien to the common law. Absent a statute, no paper or record can be incorporated into a pleading by mere reference to it. In short, mere reference to an instrument, followed by a statement of its *536incorporation into a pleading, is not sufficient to make it part of that pleading without physically annexing the original or copy. Sidlo, Simmons, Day & Co. v. Phillips, 48 Wyo. 390, 49 P.2d 243, 244 [1935].
A petition, unless timely challenged by motion, is deemed sufficient even though it does not have conveyances attached thereto. Hurst v. Hannah, 107 Okl. 3, 229 P. 163, 166 [1924], Neither is absence of such physical attachments fatal to the validity of the judgment roll. Fibikowski v. Fibikowski, 185 Okl. 520, 94 P.2d 921, 926 [1939],

. The question was raised but not answered in Paschall v. Christie-Stewart, Inc., 414 U.S. 100, 102, 94 S.Ct. 313, 315, 38 L.Ed.2d 298 [1974], Nor was it necessary to reach it in Christie-Stewart, Inc. v. Paschall, Okl., 544 P.2d 505, 506 [1976]. For a federal view of how due process may affect state-imposed limitations see Chase Securities Corporation v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 311, 65 S.Ct. 1137, 1141, 89 L.Ed. 1628 [1945],