Court Opinion

ID: 9811243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:13:50.347761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:39.411032
License: Public Domain

Hoke, J.,
concurring:
I cannot assent to the position that the laws of North Carolina controlling the question either make or were intended to make the indexing an essential part of a valid registration. The cases in other States which so hold were on the interpretation of statutes having substantially different wording from ours, and I am of opinion that the case of Davies v. Whitaker, 114 N. C., 279, was well decided. True, the books in many of the counties have become 'so numerous that with*14■out an index tbe value of our registration laws, as an assurance of title, has been greatly impaired; but if a change is desirable on that account, I think it should be made by the Legislature and not by the courts. In any aspect of the matter, however, I concur in the disposition made of the present cause, the plaintiffs having acquired their title while the ■case of Davies v. Whitaker was recognized as law.
The position applicable is correctly stated, I think, in Mason v. Cotton Co., 148 N. C., 510, as follows:
“The general principle is, that a decision of a court of supreme juris■diction overruling a former decision is retrospective in its operation, and the effect is not that the former decision is bad law, but that it never was the law. Center School Township v. State ex rel., 150 Ind., 168; Stockton, Trustee, v. Manufacturing Co., 22 N. J. Eq., 56; Storrie v. Cortes and wife, 90 Tex., 283. To this the courts have established the exception that where a constitutional or statute law has received a given construction by the courts of last resort, and contracts have been made and rights acquired under and in accordance with such construction, such contracts may not be invalidated ñor Arested rights acquired under them impaired by a change of construction made by a subsequent decision,” citing Hill v. R. R., 143 N. C., 539; Gelpcke v. City of Dubuque, 68 U. S., 175 ; City of Sedalia v. George A. Gold, 91 Mo. App., 32, and Falconer v. Simmons, 51 W. Va., 172.
On the record, plaintiffs case comes clearly within the principle of ■this exception, and I concur in the ruling that they have a valid title to the land covered by their deed.