Court Opinion

ID: 9841761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:05:02.469036+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:40.644324
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Miller
dissenting.
I earnestly dissent from the opinion of the majority of the court. I do not enter into the question of the circumstances under which a foreign corporation can do business within the limits of the State of Colorado under section 23 of the General Statutes of 1883 of that State, nor do I here consider or attach importance to the question of how far a party dealing with a foreign corporation which has not complied with the rules prescribed by the State to enable it to do business in the State is estopped by the presumption that, in making contracts with *294it, it has recognized its official existence and its right to contract. I base my dissent in the present case upon the following emphatic language in the laws of that State:
“No foreign or domestic corporation established or maintained in any way for pecuniary profit of .its stockholders or members shall purchase or hold real estate in this State except as provided for in this act.”
It is very clear that the words “ as provided for in this act ” have relation to the acts, prescribed for all corporations, of filing with the Secretary of State, and .the recorder of deeds of the county in which that business is carried on, the necessary statement of their corporate existence, properly certified, and the appointment of agents in the State residing in its principal place of business. The language I have just; cited from this statute is unambiguous, and is not a declaration of powers and rights conferred upon these corporations; but it is prohibitory, and declares that no corporation shall purchase or hold real estate that has not complied with this requirement. It has been a recognized doctrine -of this court for a great many years, perhaps a century, that the transfer of title to real estate, whether by inheritance, by purchase and sale, or by any other mode by which title to property is acquired, is rightfully governed by the laws of the State in which the land .is situated. The policy of permitting corporations to hold real estate has always been a restricted .one. Corporate .bodies, whether for public use or for private purposes, have always been subjects of limitation on their right' to hold real estate. It may be prohibited altogether. It may be allowed with distinct limitations as to amount either in quantity or in value. In this respect it is wholly within the control' of legis-. lative action. I can conceive of cases where corporations have been authorized to acquire a limited amount of real estate such as the. legislature may conceive to be useful and necessary to the purpose for which they are organized,' or to take property for specific uses> in which the question as to whether they have exceeded that amount or perverted the use may be one for the State alone, and not of any private citizen. But the positive declaration that a corporation shall not purchase or hold real *295estate, which is not a grant of power, but an express denial of its power to hold any real estate under the circumstances mentioned, is in my opinion destructive óf the right to hold any real estate at all under those circumstances. 'Whenever it is shown' that any of these corporations have not complied with the requirements of the statute, they are forbidden to purchase or hold real estate. Any such purchase is therefore void. It is the positive declaration of the law of the land. The title does not pass, and it needs no inquest of the State to establish that fact. The title which would have passed if the corporation had a right to purchase does not pass. It remains in the party who attempted to grant or convey it. The grantee can neither purchase nor hold real estate. The assumption of the opinion of the court is that it may purchase and it may hold real estate. I have not time to give the authorities on this subject. They are numerous; but they are generally applicable to cases in which the granting power of the corporation is wanting in sufficient language to enable it. to purchase and hold, and.not to statutes which are in their terms prohibitory, forbidding and peremptory.