Court Opinion

ID: 9642010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:45:44.388767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:42.043308
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Ejectment is a suit at law in which the .plaintiff is entitled to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States — the supreme law of our land. A judgment for defendant, duly recorded, as it may now be under the Act of March 8, 1906 (Compilation of Rev. St. and Codes of Porto Rico, page 848), will effectually remove any alleged cloud on her title. She therefore had a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law. Rev. St. § 723 (28 USCA § 384).
Moreover, unless the defendant had a good legal title, she had no occasion to resort to equity to remove an alleged cloud thereon. The prior adjudication of her legal right was. therefore necessary for determining the existence of any equitable right. The dictum of Chief Justice Taft in Liberty Oil Co. v. Condon National Bank, 260 U. S. 235, 242, 43 S. Ct. 118, 121, 67 L. Ed. 232, that “the equitable issue raised should first be’disposed of as in a court of equity,” is obviously inapplicable to such a situation, where the very existence of an equitable issue is dependent upon the prior determination of a legal right. This dictum cannot properly be held to justify an evasion or defiance of the Seventh Amendment; for the Chief Justice also says: “The right of trial by jury is preserved exactly as it was at common law.”
The holding that plaintiff, by filing a replication to defendant’s answer in equity, waived its constitutional right to a jury, seems to me an unsound and most dangerous doctrine. At the very outset of the hearing before the court, plaintiff strenuously insisted on its right to a trial by jury. This was enough; there-was no waiver.
Her title is grounded on tax deeds and prescription — possession for ten years in her predecessors in title, — a very flimsy foundation. Even in the present case, tried as'an equity suit, possession for the prescriptive period was (as the majority opinion in effect concedes) a fair issue of fact for the jury. Plaintiff was constitutionally entitled to 'a decision of this issue by a jury.
Almost certainly both tax deeds were void, and furnished no just title for prescription. Lopez, Jr., had no possession of the 255 cuer-da tract, except as a trespasser. His posses-sory title was without rightful legal foundation. Title to this tract was and remained in the crown as sovereign.
It is plain that public lands cannot be taxed. Iowa Homestead Co. v. Valley Railroad, 17 Wall. 153, 21 L. Ed. 622; Crilley v. Burrows, 17 Wall. 167 note, 21 L. Ed. 624; Braxton v. Rich (C. C.) 47 F. 178; Hall v. Dowling, 18 Cal. 619; Government of Philippine Islands v. Adriano, 41 Philippine R. 112, 118.
His title to the 100 cuerda tract was little better; for, by appropriate proceedings, the Canino conditional grant of 1847 was held forfeited for failure to cultivate, in accordance with the “indispensable condition.”
After the decision of the Governor General, the Forestry Department took formal possession of the 100 cuerda tract in the name of the crown, and on August 3, 1883, a formal instrument signed by .the forestry .officials and Lopez (son and heir of the original Lopez) evidenced that possession, stating “that the guardia civil would be the principal custodians of same.” This duly authenticated document was not inadmissible as hearsay. Compare Rev. Stats, and Codes, §§ 1437, 1438,1439.
The court below excluded all of these records, concerning both tracts,- as incompetent to affect the Livingston title under the Mortgage Law. This was error.
As already stated, defendant’s title to the Canino tract, if any, is grounded, on a tax deed and prescription. If the forfeiture Was valid, there was no possibility of valid tax on publie land, no “just title” to ground pre*723scription. Moreover, Lopez’ written admission in 1883 of possession taken by the government was plainly competent on the question of possession. He claimed then to have title against the crown; on decision against him, he admitted possession taken by the crown. Only failure of the Spanish officials to record this final judgment in its favor furnished any color of title for this tract.
The argument of plaintiff’s learned counsel that this judgment was not recordable under article 2 of the Mortgage Law is highly persuasive; it was not considered or apparently thought of by Chief Justice White in Romeu v. Todd, 206 U. S. 358, 27 S. Ct. 724, 51 L. Ed. 1093. The sound construction of article 2 seems to me to exclude, by necessary implication, all judgments except those under paragraph 4 adjudicating incapacity of persons to execute instruments of conveyance. Such was apparently the contemporaneous construction of the Spanish officials. Cf. Comp. Rev. Stat. & Codes, p. 1063.
The slur on the good faith of the Porto Rican officials in these proceedings seems to me entirely unwarranted. In my view, they acted properly and conscientiously in attempting to vindicate the public right to public lands, passing to this nation by the treaty of Paris.
The gist of the present decision, affirming the court below, is that the Act of March 3, 1915, enacting section 274b of the Judicial Code (28 USCA § 398), ma.y be so used as to destroy the constitutional right to a jury trial given by the Seventh Amendment. From such a doctrine I emphatically dissent. American Mills v. American Surety Co., 260 U. S. 360, 363, 43 S. Ct. 149, 67 L. Ed. 306; Scott v. Neely, 140 U. S. 106, 110, 11 S. Ct. 712, 35 L. Ed. 358; Henrietta Mills v. Rutherford County, 281 U. S. 121, 127, 128, 50 S. Ct. 270, 74 L. Ed. 737; Whitehead v. Shattuck, 138 U. S. 146, 11 S. Ct. 276, 34 L. Ed. 873.