Alvin Leigh v. Henry Green

• Decision Date: 23 February 1904
• Docket Number: No. 119,119
• Parties: ALVIN L. LEIGH, Plff. in Err. , v. HENRY S. GREEN
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

193 U.S. 79

24 S.Ct. 390

48 L.Ed. 623

ALVIN L. LEIGH, Plff. in Err.,

v HENRY S. GREEN.

No. 119.

Argued January 13, 1904.

Decided February 23, 1904.

Messrs.

The facts essential to the determination of this case are briefly summarized as follows: Irwin Davis was the owner of certain lands in Knox county, Nebraska. On the 24th day of November, 1880, an action was begun by Algernon S. Patrick against Davis, in the district court of the county, and an attachment was issued and levied upon the lands. The case was afterwards removed to the circuit court of the United States for the district of Nebraska, on October 18, 1882, where on January 21, 1890, an order for the sale of the lands in question was made for the satisfaction of the judgment, and the same were sold on May 15, 1894, by the United States marshal to Lionel C. Burr. Burr afterwards conveyed the lands to Crawford and Peters. On June 23, 1894, Crawford and Peters conveyed the premises to Alvin L. Leigh, the plaintiff in error in the present case.

Pending said attachment proceedings, on December 28, 1882 a deed was filed for record in the clerk's office of Knox county, purporting to convey the lands to Henry A. Root on October 8, 1880. Afterwards, on May 12, 1894, a decree was rendered in the district court of Douglass county, Nebraska, in a cause wherein said Patrick was plaintiff and Davis and others were defendants, setting aside the deed from Davis to Root as fraudulent and void as against the said Patrick.

In 1891 actions were brought in the district court of Knox county, wherein the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company was plaintiff and Henry A. Root and different subdivisions of the lands were defendants, for the foreclosure of certain tax liens, which actions, taken together, cover the lands in controversy in the present suit.

In the same year, 1891, decrees were entered in those cases, and orders made directing the sale of the lands for the satisfaction of the amounts found due by the decrees. In pursuance of said decrees the lands were sold by the sheriff to Henry S. Green, defendant in error in the present action. The deeds of conveyance were made and delivered to him by the sheriff. Plaintiff in error claims title because of the attachment proceedings, and defendant in error bases his claim to title upon the proceedings had for the foreclosure of the tax liens. This suit was brought by the plaintiff in error Leigh, in the district court of Knox county, to quiet title to the lands in controversy.

In that court a decree was rendered in favor of the plaintiff in error Leigh, which decree was reversed by the supreme court of Nebraska, and the cause remanded with directions to render a decree in favor of the defendant Green.

This writ of error is prosecuted to review the judgment of the supreme court of Nebraska.

J. M. Woolworth and W. D. McHugh for plaintiff in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 80-82 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Edward P. Smith and William R. Green for defendant in error.

[Argument of Counsel from Pages 82-85 intentionally omitted] Statement by Mr. Justice Day:

Mr. Justice Day, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court:

A motion is made to dismiss because the claim of impairment of a right secured by the 14th Amendment was not made in the courts of Nebraska until the motion for rehearing was filed in the supreme court. We are unable to discover a specific claim of this character made prior to the motion for rehearing. In the motion reference is made to the failure of the Nebraska supreme court to decide the claim theretofore made, that the statute of Nebraska was unconstitutional because of the alleged violation of the right to due process of law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Be this as it may, the supreme court of Nebraska entertained the motion and decided the Federal question raised against the contention of the plaintiff in error. In such case the question is reviewable here, although first presented in the motion for rehearing. Mallett v. North Carolina, 181 U. S. 589, 45 L. ed. 1015, 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 730.

The Federal question presented for our consideration is briefly this: Is the Nebraska statute under which the sale was made and under which the defendant in error claims title, in failing to make provision for service of notice of the pendency of the proceedings upon a lienholder, such as Patrick, a deprivation of property of the lienholder without due process of law within the protection of the 14th Amendment?

The statutes of Nebraska under which the conveyances were made to the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company are given in the margin.

The evident purpose of § 4, where the owner of the land is unknown, is to permit a proceeding in rem, against the land itself, with a provision for service as in case of a nonresident. By § 6 it is provided that in cases where the land itself is made defendant the deed shall be an absolute bar against all persons, unless the court proceedings are void for want of jurisdiction. The object and intent of the action is defined to be 'to create a new and independent title, by virtue of the sale, entirely unconnected with all prior titles.'

The supreme court of Nebraska has held that the term 'owner,' as used in the 4th section, applies to the owner of the fee, and does not include a person holding a lien upon the premises. It is this section (4) and § 6 which are alleged to be in conflict with the 14th Amendment. The argument for the appellant concedes that the state may adopt summary or even stringent measures for the collection of taxes so long as they are 'administrative' in their character; and it is admitted that such proceedings will not devest the citizen of his property without due process of law, although had without notice of assessments or levy, or of his delinquency and the forfeiture of his lands. But the argument is, that when the state goes into court and invokes judicial power to give effect to a lien upon property, although created to secure the payment of taxes, the same principles and rules prevail which govern private citizens seeking judicial remedies, and require service on all interested parties within the jurisdiction. The right to levy and collect taxes has always been recognized as one of the supreme powers of the state, essential to its maintenance, and for the enforcement of which the legislature may resort to such remedies as it chooses, keeping within those which do not impair the constitutional rights of the citizen. Whether property is taken without due process of law depends upon the nature of each particular case. If it be such an exercise of power 'as the settled maxims of law permit and sanction, and under such safeguards for the protection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the classes to which the one in question belongs,' it is due process of law. Cooley, Const. Lim. 7th ed. 506.

The most summary methods of seizure and sale for the satisfaction of taxes and public dues have been held to be authorized, and not to amount to the taking of property without due process of law, as a seizure and sale of property upon warrant issued on ascertainment of the amount due by an administrative officer (Murray v. Hoboken Land & Improv. Co. 18 How. 272, 15 L. ed. 372), the seizure and forfeiture of distilled spirits for the payment of the tax (Henderson's Distilled Spirits, 14 Wall. 44, 20 L. ed. 815). The subject underwent a thorough examination in the case of Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S. 97, 24 L. ed. 616, in which Mr. Justice Miller, while recognizing the difficulty of defining satisfactorily due process of law in terms which shall apply to all cases, and the desirability of judicial determination upon each case as it arises, used this language: 'That whenever, by the laws of a state, or by state authority, a tax, assessment, servitude, or other burden is imposed upon property for the public use, whether it be for the whole state or of some limited portion of the community; and those laws provide for a mode of confirming or contesting the charge thus imposed, in the ordinary courts of justice, with such notice to the person, or such proceeding in regard to the property, as is appropriate to the nature of the case,—the judgment in such proceedings cannot be said to deprive the owner of his property without due process of law, however obnoxious it may be to other objections.'

In the present case, the argument is that as the state has not seen fit to resort to the drastic remedy of summary sale of the land for delinquent taxes, but has created a lien in favor of a purchaser, at tax sale, after permitting two years to elapse in which the owner or lienholder may redeem the property, it has, in authorizing a foreclosure without actual service, taken property without due process of law, because the proceedings and sale to satisfy the tax lien do not require all lienholders within the jurisdiction of the court to be served with process. If the state may proceed summarily, we see no reason why it may not resort to such judicial proceedings as are authorized in this case. And if the state may do so, is the property owner injured by a transfer of such rights to the purchaser at the tax sale, who is invested with the authority of the state? In Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S. 97, 24 L. ed. 616, the objection was made that the state could not delegate its power to a private corporation to do certain public work, and by statute fix the price at which the work should be done. In that connection, speaking of the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 21 L. ed. 394, Mr. Justice Miller said: 'The right of the state to use a private corporation and confer upon it the necessary powers to carry into effect sanitary regulations was affirmed, and the decision is applicable to a similar objection in the case now before us.'

In the statute under consideration, for the purpose...