Court Opinion

ID: 9428578
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:10.253671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.350544
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice White, Justice Marshall, and Justice Powell join,
dissenting.
There is no measurable dispute in these cases concerning Indiana’s power to control, define, and limit interests in land within its boundaries. Nor is there any question that Indiana has a legitimate interest in encouraging the productive use of land by establishing a registration system to identify the owners of mineral rights. Nor indeed is there any question that extinguishment of a mineral owner’s rights may be an appropriate sanction for a failure to register. The question presented here is simply whether the State of Indiana has deprived these appellants of due process of law by extinguishing their pre-existing property interests without regard to whether they knew, and without providing any meaningful mechanism by which they might have learned, of the imminent taking of their property or their obligations under the law.
I
The State of Indiana has historically afforded owners of incorporeal interests in minerals all the protections and privileges enjoyed by any owner of an estate in land held in fee simple. The mineral interests of the appellants here were thus assuredly within the scope of the dual constitutional guarantees that there be no taking of property without just *541compensation, and no deprivation of property without the due process of law. By the statute at issue in these cases, Indiana has imposed upon the owners of mineral interests the requirement that they pay taxes, or put their interest to productive use, or make their identity known by filing a statement of claim every 20 years. If the mineral interest owner fails to comply with these conditions, his interest is extinguished, and the mineral rights in the land are, by operation of law, merged with the surface estate, to the benefit of the surface owner.1
*542As to one class of mineral interest owners, there is no question that the statute is a constitutionally proper exercise of the State’s power. Every mineral interest in land carved from the fee after the effective date of the statute was carved subject to the statute’s limitations. In prospective application the statute simply provides that any instrument purporting to transfer a mineral interest carries with it the implicit condition that unless the transferee uses the land within the meaning of the statute, his interest will revert to the trans-feror. It is only where the State seeks to change the fundamental nature of a property interest already in the hands of its owner that the operative restrictions of both the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause come into play.
If Indiana were by simple fiat to “extinguish” all preexisting mineral interests in the State, or to transfer those interests to itself, to surface owners, or indeed to anyone at all, that action would surely be unconstitutional and unenforceable — at least absent just compensation. That is not the case here for, as the Court points out, ante, at 529, 531, the State has offered the owner of a mineral interest several options by which he may preserve his interest, and a grace period in which he may do so. Because the State has provided these options, the Court concludes that there has been no unconstitutional deprivation of property: “It is the owner’s failure to make any use of the property — and not the action of the State — that causes the lapse of the property right. . . .” Ante, at 530. The Court disdains any serious consideration of whether the saving options afforded by the State are in any meaningful way within the reach of the mineral interest owners.2 In this respect the Court errs, for the Due Process *543Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the Court to make precisely the inquiry the Court avoids. As we have noted:
“It does not follow, however, that what [a State] can legislate prospectively it can legislate retrospectively. The retrospective aspects of legislation, as well as the prospective aspects, must meet the test of due process, and the justifications for the latter may not suffice for the former.” Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U. S. 1, 16-17 (1976).
There is much to be said for the maxim upon which the Court places its principal reliance in upholding the retrospective application of this statute: that each citizen may be *544charged with knowledge of the law.3 The justification for that rule is its necessity. As a practical matter, a State cannot afford notice to every person who is or may be affected by a change in the law. But an unfair and irrational exercise of state power cannot be transformed into a rational exercise merely by invoking a legal maxim or presumption. If it is to survive the scrutiny that the Constitution requires us to afford laws that deprive persons of substantial interests in property, an enactment that relies on that presumption of knowledge must evidence some rational accommodation between the interests of the State and fairness to those against whom the law is applied. Cf. Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441 (1973). By acknowledging that there is some limit to the exercise of legislative power to transform the interests of persons in property, we do not depart from the principle of utmost deference to the judgment of the legislature to reach those accommodations in the first instance. But the Constitution puts even our most cherished legal maxims and presumptions to the test of fairness and rationality in light of common experience. “[I]n passing on the constitutionality of a state law, its effect must be judged in the light of its practi*545cal application to the affairs of men as they are ordinarily conducted.” North Laramie Land Co. v. Hoffman, 268 U. S. 276, 283 (1925).
Thus, we have recognized certain very limited circumstances in which a State’s reliance on the maxim that a man may be presumed to know the law is not consistent with the restrictions imposed by the Constitution on legislative action. In Lambert v. California, 355 U. S. 225 (1957), a municipal ordinance made it an offense for any convicted felon to remain in the city of Los Angeles for more than five days without registering with the police. We held that the ordinance, which purported to deprive a person of liberty for failing to register, could not be applied to a person who neither knew, nor could reasonably have been expected to know, of his legal obligation. As we noted:
“[W]e deal here with conduct that is wholly passive— mere failure to register. It is unlike the commission of acts, or the failure to act under circumstances that *546should alert the doer to the consequences of his deed. The rule that ‘ignorance of the law will not excuse’ is deep in our law, as is the principle that of all the powers of local government, the police power is ‘one of the least limitable.’ On the other hand, due process places some limits on its exercise. Engrained in our concept of due process is the requirement of notice. Notice is sometimes essential so that the citizen has the chance to defend charges. Notice is required before property interests are disturbed, before assessments are made, before penalties are assessed. Notice is required in a myriad of situations where a penalty or forfeiture might be suffered for mere failure to act. . . .
“Registration laws are common and their range is wide. Many such laws are akin to licensing statutes in that they pertain to the regulation of business activities. But the present ordinance is entirely different. Violation of its provisions is unaccompanied by any activity whatever, mere presence in the city being the test. Moreover, circumstances which might move one to inquire as to the necessity of registration are completely lacking. . . . [TJhis appellant on first becoming aware of her duty to register was given no opportunity to comply with the law and avoid its penalty, even though her default was entirely innocent. ” Id., at 228-229 (emphasis added) (citations omitted).
There is, of course, no general requirement that a State take affirmative steps to inform its citizenry of their obligations under a particular statute before imposing legal sanctions for violation of that statute. Lambert suggests no such general requirement. Rather, that case highlights the limited circumstances in which the State’s reliance on a presumption of knowledge strains the constitutional requirement that the liberty and property of persons be dealt with fairly and rationally by the State. The State’s power to impose sanctions on individuals is to be tested in part against the rationality of the proposition that those individuals were *547or could have been aware of their legal obligations. The present cases, like Lambert, involve the necessity of notice in the context of a registration statute sufficiently unusual in character, and triggered in circumstances so commonplace, that an average citizen would have no reason to regard the triggering event as calling for a heightened awareness of one’s legal obligations.4
The opinion of the Court suggests that the presumption of knowledge of the law is not unreasonable in cases such as these because it is a customary feature of property ownership that the landowner monitor the Acts of the legislature that may affect his interest. Ante, at 532. The Court would appear to treat property owners as businessmen, of whom we do indeed expect the greatest attentiveness to regulatory obligations in the conduct of their business affairs. But neither our cases nor our experience supports the Court’s supposition about the diligence reasonably expected of property owners. Property owners have historically been allowed to rest easy in the knowledge that their holding is secure, absent some affirmative indication to the contrary; to rely on the general practice that “[n]otice is required before property interests are disturbed, before assessments are made, before penalties are assessed. Notice is required in a myriad of situations where a penalty or forfeiture might be suffered for mere fail*548ure to act.” Lambert v. California, 355 U. S., at 228. Surely no contrary understanding of the obligations of property ownership could be attributed to the mineral interest owners of Indiana. It was their historic complacency, heretofore undisturbed by statutory obligation, that prompted the State of Indiana to install the regulatory regime at issue here.
The Constitution does, of course, permit the interests of a property owner to be adversely affected upon notice less exacting than those mechanisms of notification deemed minimally acceptable in other contexts. But the rationale for this standard of “lesser notice” with respect to matters involving land bears restating for the contrast that it presents with the circumstances of these cases:
“[Publication traditionally has been acceptable as notification supplemental to other action which in itself may reasonably be expected to convey a warning. The ways of an owner with tangible property are such that he usually arranges means to learn of any direct attack on his possessory or proprietary rights. Hence, libel of a ship, attachment of a chattel or entry upon real estate in the name of law may reasonably be expected to come promptly to the owner’s attention. When the state within which the owner has located such property seizes it for some reason, publication or posting affords an additional measure of notification. A state may indulge the assumption that one who has left tangible property in the state either has abandoned it, in which case proceedings against it deprive him of nothing, or that he has left some caretaker under a duty to let him know that it is being jeopardized.” Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 316 (1950) (emphasis added; citations omitted).
It may be reasonable to expect property owners to maintain sufficient awareness of their property to mark those situations in which the property is physically disturbed with some scrutiny of their duties and obligations under the law. The owners of the incorporeal interests at issue here are *549hardly in a similar situation. There is no event or circumstance to which they might have turned their powers of observation; nothing has been directly attacked, seized, possessed, used, or depleted. The only “caretaker” who could have guarded the interest of appellants from the silent actions of the legislature and the surface owner, is a caretaker charged with the responsibility of daily surveillance over happenings in the state legislature. In light of “the affairs of men as they are ordinarily conducted,” a State may not constitutionally attribute to each citizen the foresight, or the continuing duty, to maintain a lobbyist in the state capital in order to guard his property from extinguishment.
The Court also relies on cases involving the application of legislatively foreshortened limitations periods to causes of actions that have already vested. Ante, at 532. But those cases illustrate, rather than refute, the constitutional principle that reliance on the maxim of presumed knowledge of the law is limited by the reasonableness of applying that maxim in a particular class of cases. The Court has upheld retroactive adjustments to a limitations period only when the legislature has provided a grace period during which the potential plaintiff could reasonably be expected to learn of the change in the law and then initiate his action. In the context of a retrospective statute of limitations, a reasonable grace period provides an adequate guarantee of fairness. Having suffered the triggering event of an injury, a potential plaintiff is likely to possess a heightened alertness to the possibly changing requirements of the law bearing on his claim. Because redress necessarily depends on recourse to the State’s judicial system, the State is free to condition its intervention on rules of procedure, and further, to impose on the potential plaintiff the obligation to monitor changes in those rules. Plaintiffs, and their attorneys, are so aware.
The situation of appellants here is not at all similar. The statute does not operate upon the dormant mineral interest owner after he has suffered some direct affront to his property such that he might reasonably be called upon to increase *550his awareness of his legal obligations. The mineral interest owner has not been derelict in pressing rights against third parties such that the State may reasonably assume he has abandoned his interest. The mineral interest owner has no reason to anticipate an occasion for state assistance, and thus no reason to monitor the ground rules upon which the State conditions its aid. In these cases the State has taken the initiative in seeking to regulate heretofore unregulated incorporeal interests in land under circumstances in which a need for heightened attentiveness to the law cannot reasonably be apprehended by the mineral interest owner. In these circumstances, the empirical foundation of the assertion that passage of a statute will create knowledge of its provisions is at its weakest.
This does not end the inquiry, for the State may have an identifiable interest in not making provision for notice in a particular circumstance. If there were such an interest, the Constitution would not lightly supplant the legislative judgment. I thus turn to the asserted interests of the State in the procedure established here.
II
It is plain that that sheer impracticality makes it implausible to expect the State itself to apprise its citizenry of the enactment of a statute of general applicability. The State may, however, feasibly provide notice when it asserts an interest directly adverse to particular persons, and may in that circumstance be constitutionally compelled to do so. That is not the situation presented in these cases, for the mineral interest owner’s failure to comply with the statute results in neither a fine nor an escheat. Rather, his interest is effectively transferred to the surface owner. While the State is not disinterested, as a policy matter, in whether the mineral interest owner files a notice of claim, it sanctions a failure to comply by adjusting the relative rights of the mineral interest owner as against another citizen. In this context it is *551again helpful to examine — and contrast — the reasons supporting the lack of notice in the context of retrospectively applied limitations periods.
First, statutes of limitations “are practical and pragmatic devices to spare the courts from litigation of stale claims, and the citizen from being put to his defense after memories have faded, witnesses have died or disappeared, and evidence has been lost.” Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U. S. 304, 314 (1945). The very interest asserted by the State in imposing a statute of limitations — avoiding trial of stale claims — would be defeated by extending the time in which the plaintiff may bring his suit until such time as he may learn of the existence of the statute or the fact that it may soon run. In addition, with respect to statutes of limitations, pre-expiration notice is, as a practical matter, impossible: The potential defendant may not be aware of the potential plaintiffs injury, let alone the plaintiffs future intention to sue. Under these circumstances the potential defendant cannot be expected to monitor the law on behalf of his future — perhaps unknown — adversary. In sum, a State need not make provision for notice with respect to the retroactive application of a statute where it would defeat a legitimate State interest, or would be infeasible in the context of the statutory scheme.
In these cases, Indiana asserts an interest in ensuring the productive use of land within its boundaries, and particularly in promoting the exploitation of land containing energy resources such as coal, gas, and oil. The existence of stale and abandoned mineral interests impedes the development of those mineral resources, and hinders the development of the surface as well, by preventing the willing buyer from making contact with a willing seller. To facilitate the operation of the market with respect to mineral development, Indiana has required, by the statute at issue here, that the mineral interest owner file a statement of his claim once every 20 years, or suffer extinguishment of his unused interest. This minimal burden on the mineral rights owner is intended to ensure that *552the interest owner is identifiable, and thus suffices to maintain his accessibility to potential purchasers. Should the notice not be filed, the State’s interest in identification is equally well served: the surface owner, presumably identified readily by virtue of his interest in a parcel of tangible property, becomes the beneficiary of the mineral interest owner’s default. By facilitating identification of the owners of the mineral interest, the statute permits the willing buyer — presumably someone who would wish to put the land to productive use — to locate the presumably willing seller, and thus reach the type of deal that could lead to an economically productive use of the land. With respect to the treatment of mineral interest owners, such as appellants here, whose 20-year period had run or partially run as of the date of the enactment, the State’s interest is no different. Although the operative period may be abbreviated, the State seeks only to ensure either use, or identification.
It is difficult to conceive how the State’s interest is served by not requiring the surface owner to notify the mineral rights owner before taking title to his interest; I do not understand either the private appellees, or the State of Indiana as intervenor, to identify any affirmative state interest in failing to provide for pre-extinguishment notice. It might be supposed that a requirement of pre-extinguishment notice by the surface owner would present an untoward economic burden on the surface owner that would impede the purposes of the statute or would otherwise be inconsistent with the statutory framework. But it is plain on the face of the statute that this is not so.
Although the statute is self-executing as to one class of mineral interest owners, notice is required before the interests of another class of mineral interest owners are terminated. If the mineral interest owner is one who owns 10 mineral interests in the county and has made diligent effort to preserve his interest, and his failure to preserve is inadvertent, he is afforded the opportunity to file a statement of claim “within sixty (60) days after publication of notice as *553provided in section seven [32-5-11-7] herein, if such notice is published, and if no such notice is published, within sixty (60) days after receiving actual knowledge that such mineral interest had lapsed.”5 Ind. Code §32-5-11-5(4) (1976). The person charged with the responsibility of providing notice by publication to a holder of 10 interests or more, is, of course, the surface owner. And indeed, the statute sets forth explicitly the manner in which such notice by publication is to be made:
“Any person who will succeed to the ownership of any mineral interest, upon the lapse thereof, may give notice of the lapse of such mineral interest by publishing the same in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which such mineral interest is located, and, if the address of such mineral interest owner is shown of record or can be determined upon reasonable inquiry, by mailing within ten days after such publication a copy of such notice to the owner of such mineral interest. The notice shall state the name of the owner of such mineral interest, as shown of record, a description of the land, and the name of the person giving such notice. If a copy of such notice, together with an affidavit of service thereof, shall be promptly filed in the office of the Recorder of Deeds in the county wherein such land is located, the record thereof shall be prima facie evidence, in any legal proceedings, that such notice was given.” Ind. Code §32-5-11-6 (1976).
Because no surface property owner could claim clear title to the mineral interest absent such notice — or else a potential purchaser would suffer the possibility that some holder of 10 *554or more interests might later come forward to claim his rights — such notice is, in practical operation, likely to be provided in every case. The only difficulty is that as construed by the Court today, the statutory notice comes too late for mineral interest holders in the position of appellants to assert their continued interest in their property rights. Because it is clear to me that a form of pre-extinguishment notice, procedurally comparable to that statutorily provided with respect to owners of 10 interests or more, is entirely consistent with the asserted legislative purpose, I would hold that such notice was constitutionally required before a person, otherwise without notice of his obligations under the statute, might be deprived of his property “by operation of law.”
l — l 1 — 1
In the exercise of a State’s police powers, and perhaps particularly with respect to matters involving the regulation of land, we owe the judgments of state legislatures great deference. Nevertheless, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to guard owners of property from the wholly arbitrary actions of state governments. As applied retrospectively to extinguish the rights of mineral interest owners for their failure to have made use of their interests within a prior 20-year period, Indiana’s statutory scheme would likely effect an unlawful taking of property absent the proviso that such mineral interest owners could preserve their rights by filing a notice of claim within the 2-year grace period. Given the nature of the scheme established, there is no discernible basis for failing to afford those owners such notice as would make the saving proviso meaningful. As applied to mineral interest owners who were without knowledge of their legal obligations, and who were not permitted to file a saving statement of claim within some period following the giving of statutory notice by the surface owner, the statute operates unconstitutionally. In my view, under these circumstances, the provision of no process simply cannot be deemed due process of law. I respectfully dissent.

 Indiana Code § 32-5-11-1 (1976) provides that
“Any interest in coal, oil, and gas, and other minerals, shall, if unused for a period of 20 years, be extinguished, unless a statement of claim is filed in accordance with section five [32-5-11-5] hereof, and the ownership shall revert to the then owner of the interest out of which it was carved.”
A mineral interest is deemed “used” for the purposes of the statute
“when there are any minerals produced thereunder or when operations are being conducted thereon for injection, withdrawal, storage or disposal of water, gas or other fluid substances, or when rentals or royalties are being paid by the owner thereof for the purpose of delaying or enjoying the use or exercise of such rights or when any such use is being carried out on any tract with which such mineral interest may be unitized or pooled for production purposes, or when, in the case of coal or other solid minerals, there is production from a common vein or seam by the owners of such mineral interests, or when taxes are paid on such mineral interest by the owner thereof. Any use pursuant to or authorized by the instrument creating such mineral interest shall be effective to continue in force all rights granted by such instrument.” Ind. Code § 32-5-11-3 (1976).
With respect to the statement of claim, the statute specifies the relevant time limits:
“The statement of claim provided in section one above [32-5-11-1] shall be filed by the owner of the mineral interest prior to the end of the twenty year period set forth in section two [one] [32 — 5—11—1] or within two years after the effective date [September 2, 1971] of this act, whichever is later, and shall contain the name and address of the owner of such interest, and description of the land, on or under which such mineral interest is located. Such statement of claim shall be filed in the office of the Recorder of Deeds in the county in which such land is located. Upon the filing of the statement of claim within the time provided, it shall be deemed that such mineral interest was being used on the date the statement of claim was filed.” Ind. Code §32-5-11-4 (1976).

 In an attempt to support its refusal seriously to inquire into the adequacy of the protections afforded mineral interest owners by which they might preserve their property, the Court analogizes the Indiana statute to a Recording Act and draws on the pre-Fourteenth Amendment case of Jackson v. Lamphire, 3 Pet. 280 (1830). Ante, at 528-529, 532. The Court’s reliance is misplaced. In Jackson v. Lamphire, supra, we recognized that the manner of implementing a Recording Act is to be left to the *543discretion of the legislature in the first instance. But we also recognized the natural limits of that legislative authority.
“The time and manner of their operation, the exceptions to them, and the acts from which the time limited shall begin to run, will generally depend on the sound discretion of the legislature, according to the nature of the titles, the situation of the country, and the emergency which leads to their enactment. Cases may occur where the provisions of a law on those subjects may be so unreasonable as to amount to a denial of a right, and call for the interposition of the court; but the present is not one.” Id., at 290 (emphasis added).
It is not at all surprising that we did not find the exercise of legislative authority in Jackson v. Lamphire unreasonable. In 1797, the New York Legislature established a Commission to settle competing claims to land within a particular county. The New York Act provided a 2-year period, following the action of the Commission, in which any party adversely affected might dissent and preserve his right to recover his title. Id., at 282-283. In addition, before the Commission could act, the New York legislation required precisely those forms of notice that appellants in these cases complain are lacking in the Indiana statute. The Commission was expressly charged with the responsibility of notifying the populace that it was convening to resolve disputes concerning land within the county. Id., at 283. The New York Act further provided that
“in all cases where there are filed or recorded . . . two or more deeds from one and the same person, or in the same right to different persons, if any person interested under either of them shall neglect to make his claim, and in all cases where several persons appear to have claims to one and the *544same piece of land, and any of them do not appear before the said commissioners, they shall cause a notice to be published in the newspapers aforesaid, and continued for six weeks, requiring all persons interested in such land to appear at a certain time and place therein mentioned, not less than six months from the date of such notice, and exhibit their claims to the same land.” Id., at 284 (emphasis added).
If the Indiana statute at issue in these cases provided a 2-year period in which mineral interest owners could assert their interests, following notice by publication, as provided in the New York Act at issue in Jackson v. Lamphire, I would readily agree that the Indiana statute was reasonable even as applied to existing mineral interests. Absent such notice, the 2-year grace period provided by Indiana is constitutionally meaningless.

 Despite suggestive references to cases involving abandonment of property, ante, at 526-528, the Court does not rest on the argument that failure to comply with the provisions of the Indiana statute implies abandonment. Nor could the Court so rest. The very cases cited by the Court demon*545strate that the finding of abandonment with respect to rights in land has historically been associated with the property owner’s failure to pursue legal remedies over the course of some legislatively established period of time. See Wilson v. Iseminger, 185 U. S. 55 (1902); Hawkins v. Barney’s Lessee, 5 Pet. 457, 466-467 (1831). The mineral interest owners in these cases plainly have not been derelict in pressing their rights. Until their interests were extinguished “by operation of law” they simply had no occasion to pursue any legal action. Moreover, that mineral interest owners may have failed to exploit their interest for 20 years, during which period it may not have been economically feasible to extract minerals from the property, and during which period there was no statutory obligation to use the interest in any manner, does not suggest abandonment. Cf. Provident Savings Institution v. Malone, 221 U. S. 660, 664 (1911). Nor can the intent to abandon, or any independent state interest supporting the Indiana statute, be found in appellants’ failure to pay taxes. At no time have taxes been separately assessed with respect to the reserved mineral interest in No. 80-1018. App. in No. 80-1018, p. 7. While the record is slightly more ambiguous with respect to No. 80-965, appellees conceded at oral argument that the counties of Indiana generally do not assess taxes on mineral interests that are neither in use nor in the process of development. Tr. of Oral Arg. 25.

 Because Lambert involved the imposition of criminal sanctions, giving rise to a rigor in the application of due process standards that would be inappropriate where only interests in property are at stake, it cannot control the disposition here. But the rigor with which the due process test was applied in Lambert is worth noting. The city’s interest in that case lay in identifying felons within its boundaries. The ordinance failed for want of notice. But it is difficult to conceive how the city might have contrived an ordinance, effecting the same purpose, short of informing every person who entered the city that if he was a convicted felon he was obliged to register with the police. Because it was the singular purpose of the city to identify felons, individualized notice was simply incompatible with the legislative purpose. Nevertheless, we held the ordinance unenforceable. As will be noted below, the requirement of prior notice with respect to the registration scheme at issue in these cases, does not limit the ability of the State to further its asserted objectives. See infra, at 551-554.

 It may be, as the Court holds, that the State may rationally prefer the holders of 10 interests to those who hold less, and that the holders of more numerous claims may thus be afforded special protections. The distinction drawn between the two classes of holders would thus survive the scrutiny of the Equal Protection Clause. The Court opinion fails, however, to identify any state interest in denying notice to a holder of less than 10 interests in the first instance.