Aikins v. Kingsbury
| Citation | 247 U.S. 484,38 S.Ct. 558,62 L.Ed. 1226 |
| Decision Date | 25 April 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 265,265 |
| Parties | AIKINS v. KINGSBURY, Register of State Land Office. Subm tted |
| Court | United States Supreme Court |
Mr. R. P. Henshall, of San Francisco, Cal., for plaintiff in error.
On June 3, 1869, the state of California sold to Charles A. B. Brackett three hundred and twenty acres of school land, and delivered to him a 'certificate of purchase' for it. Twenty per cent. of the purchase money was payable at the time of the purchase and the remainder 'within one year after the passage of any act of the Legislature requiring such payment, or before, if desired by the purchaser.'
The unpaid purchase money was to bear interest at the rate of ten per cent. per annum, payable in advance.
The purchaser paid interest to January 1, 1873, and nothing further for thirty-eight years, when, on October 26 1911, a state official, without authority to waive the default, accepted the amount of the unpaid purchase money and interest from the plaintiff in error, as transferee of the certificate, who thereupon demanded a patent for the land, which was refused for the reason that on December 29, 1886, a certificate of purchase for the same land had been issued by the state to Michael Phillips, on which the principal and interest was paid in full on August 28, 1911.
Upon this refusal by the state, the plaintiff in error filed the petition in this case 'for a writ of mandate' to compel the defendant in error, as Commissioner of the Land Office of the state to prepare a patent for the land in controversy and to send the same to the Governor of the state, together with a certificate that the laws had been complied with, and that he as transferee of Charles A. B. Brackett was entitled thereto. Such a suit is said by the Supreme Court of California to be 'in effect an action to require specific performance on the part of the state' of the contract evidenced by the certificate of purchase.
A judgment of the superior court granting the prayer of the petition was affirmed by the District Court of Appeals, and this in turn was reversed by the decision of the Supreme Court of the state which is now before us for review.
In 1889 (St. 1889, p. 428) the Legislature of California passed an act providing that in all cases in which a certificate of purchase of public land had been issued prior to March 27, 1872, on which arrears of principal and interest had remained due and unpaid for five years, and in which, prior to the passage of the act, the state had issued to a subsequent purchaser another certificate for the same land, the owner of the first issued certificate should be deemed to have lost the right to the land or to complete the contract for the purchase of it, unless he should pay all unpaid interest within six months from the passage of the act.
If this act is a valid law it is obvious that it cut off the plaintiff in error's transferror from all interest in the land in controversy, for the Brackett certificate was issued prior to March 27, 1872, interest on it had been due and unpaid for sixteen years, and another certificate had been issued to Phillips, when the act was passed, and nothing further was paid until 1911.
But the plaintiff in error claims that this act of 1889 is invalid because it impairs the obligation of his contract of 1869 and deprives him of his property without due process of law.
These are large claims, made in impressive terms, but in reality the only obligations of this simple contract were, that the state on the one hand, should furnish a patent to the land when it should be paid for at the times and in the manner stipulated, and that the purchaser, on the other hand, should make payment as he had agreed to make it.
For the enforcement of the contract the law gave to the state a remedy by foreclosure, in a court proceeding, for default of the purchaser, and to the purchaser or his assigns was given the privilege to redeem at...
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