Booth v. McKnight
| Citation | 2003 OK 49,70 P.3d 855 |
| Decision Date | 13 May 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 95,339.,95,339. |
| Parties | John R. BOOTH and Thomas Frank Booth, Plaintiffs/Appellees, v. Bobbie Jean McKNIGHT, Defendant/Appellant. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Oklahoma |
Karl D. Jones, Jones & Gardner, Vinita, OK, for Appellant.
Dan A. Erwin, Chandler, OK, for Appellees.1
¶ 1 The certiorari petition presents two dispositive issues for this court's resolution: [1] Was the Lincoln County District Court correct in concluding that the Craig County court's probate decree is facially void insofar as it distributes the mother's mineral interest? and [2] Did the former court err in quieting the brothers' title to the mineral interest? We answer both questions in the affirmative.
¶ 2 Lois Gene Booth (Mother) died testate in Craig County in 1996, survived by three children: John R. and Thomas Frank Booth, plaintiffs below (Brothers), and Bobbie Jean McKnight, defendant below (Sister). The Craig County District Court appointed Sister the personal representative of her mother's estate. Sister's final account shows the estate's residual assets to consist of $2,316.03 in Sister's lawyer's trust account and a small mineral interest (valued at $400) in a tract of land located in Lincoln County.2
¶ 3 The final account's terms explicitly state that with the exception of personal representative's and attorney's fees, all claims against the estate have been paid in full.3 The final account's filing triggered the scheduling of a hearing, the purpose of which was to consider objections to that document.4 Sister's lawyer published notice of the hearing in a local newspaper and mailed individual notices to all of the decedent's named heirs, devisees, legatees, and creditors.5 The record contains an affidavit of mailing that indicates notice of the critical hearing was sent to each of the two brothers.6
¶ 4 The mailed notice consists of a single-page document, the text of which states that a final account has been filed and a hearing on that instrument is scheduled for a certain date, time, and place. The notice urges all interested persons to appear at the hearing and show cause (if any they have) why the estate should not be settled according to the final account's terms. Conspicuously absent from the Craig County probate record is any indication that Brothers were mailed a copy of the final account that was to be the subject of the final distribution hearing and the very reason it was to be held.
¶ 5 Neither of the brothers appeared at the final hearing. In settling the estate and distributing its assets the Craig County court ordered that all of the decedent's listed property be divided among the named heirs in equal one-third shares after payment of attorney's and personal representative's fees as well as the costs of administration.7 The court decreed that the mineral estate be awarded to the Sister as her personal representative's fee.8 It granted Sister's lawyer as his probate fee the amount he held in the trust account.9 Following payment to the personal representative and her lawyer, the probate assets stood exhausted. The court closed the estate. The brothers—who never received a copy of the final distribution decree—did not press for corrective relief from that ruling in the Craig County court.10
¶ 6 Sometime after the estate's closing, the mineral interest began producing substantial revenue.11 When the brothers learned that the Craig County probate court had awarded the mineral interest to Sister in toto, they brought suit against her in Lincoln County (the situs of the land) to quiet their title.12
¶ 7 The brothers alleged their mother's will directs the mineral interest's division among the siblings in equal one-third shares. Although Sister's final account prayed for such a distribution, the court's decree awarded the interest entirely to her. The brothers (a) asserted that Sister's failure to give them adequate notice deprived them of property without due process and (b) complained the notice given them by the Craig County court was insufficient because Sister failed to let them know of the precise disposition she would seek there. Even had they read all the documents on file they would not have been adequately apprised of the relief she would press for at the final hearing.13
¶ 8 The Lincoln County District Court ruled that the Craig County notice was fatally deficient by failing to satisfy the minimum standards of due process. Instead of making it clear that a different disposition would be sought, the final account on file below (and included in the record for this appeal) confirms the asset distribution to be effected will be in conformity to the will's provisions.14 The very fact that a distribution other than that sought by the pleadings actually took place fatally taints the notice Sister provided.15 The Lincoln County court also ordered the mineral interest title quieted in each of the two brothers in one-third shares, leaving to Sister the remaining one-third.16
¶ 9 The Court of Civil Appeals (COCA) affirmed the Lincoln County court's decree, holding that neither the final account itself nor the notice of the hearing to be conducted informed the brothers that on their default they stood to lose the mineral interest devised to them by the mother's will. Lack of adequate notice deprived the brothers of the opportunity to appear and challenge the relief about to be sought. COCA analogized the result of the flawed final distribution hearing to a default judgment granting relief different in kind or amount from that sought by the pleadings and noted that such a judgment violates due process. In COCA's view (a) the Craig County probate decree's critical terms vary substantially from the plea for relief in Sister's requested distribution without affording advance notice to the brothers and (b) the variance is fatal because it facially offends due process. We granted certiorari.
THE LITIGATION'S PROCEDURAL POSTURE
¶ 10 The brothers' quiet-title litigation collaterally attacked the Craig County probate decree. Facially valid adjudications of a district court sitting in probate stand immune from collateral attack to the same extent as any other judgment.17 A court's power to decide a case includes the power to decide wrongly.18 When a court exercises judicial power over a subject, its judgment must stand undisturbed unless challenged by a timely appeal.19
¶ 11 A valid probate decree is one which—on the face of the judgment roll— shows the presence of three required elements of jurisdiction: those of the person and subject matter as well as of the power to render the entered decree.20 When an examination of the record proper's face21 reveals a want of one or more of these requirements, the decree is facially void and subject to collateral attack by any interested party at any time and wherever venue may be laid.22 Passage of time will neither vitalize a facially flawed decree (or judgment) nor immunize its plainly fatal deficiency from collateral attack.23
¶ 12 The Lincoln County court's ruling amounts to a declaration that, for want of adequate notice, the Craig County final distribution decree is facially void pro tanto—to the extent that it distributes the mineral interest entirely to Sister. It is that legal conclusion which stands here today for de novo review.24 When reexamining a trial court's legal rulings, an appellate court exercises plenary, independent, and non-deferential authority.25
¶ 13 This court is called upon to review today one district court's nullity sentence pronounced upon another district court's adjudication, rested upon the latter decision's facially-apparent partial invalidity. This task can be accomplished only by examining the entire judgment roll.26 The Lincoln County record for the appeal we now review has been assembled and certified,27 but the Craig County probate's judgment roll is in disarray. It consists only of certified copies of critical documents the parties deemed indispensable for the determination of the probate decree's facial validity and of other issues raised below.28 A collateral attack—such as that brought in Lincoln County—is not designed to afford corrective relief by appeal. Its issues stand confined to a review of the assailed judgment's four corners for facial validity a process that ordinarily can be accomplished only by resort to a complete judgment roll.
¶ 14 No issue will be resolved upon a critically deficient record.29 Our examination of the Craig County record is of necessity confined to instruments from that county's probate proceeding which stand included in the record for appeal and which qualify for incorporation into the judgment roll.30 While generally this court will not notice any instrument that is not a part of the appellate record,31 uncontroverted facts dehors that record which stand admitted in the parties' briefs may be considered to supplement the deficiently-assembled or incomplete judgment roll.32
¶ 15 Neither party voiced here an objection to the Lincoln County court's determination of the probate decree's facial invalidity upon an incomplete judgment roll nor asserted that any missing documents, if there presented for inspection, would reveal anything contrary to the Lincoln County court's view of the probate judgment roll's condition. Nor was an objection ever raised on that ground before this court. We hence conclude the Craig County probate's judgment roll (aided by the parties' admissions in the briefs) is complete enough to warrant our pronouncement that the probate decree in contest is indeed facially void pro tanto.
¶ 16 At...
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