Del Castillo v. Connico, 48

• Decision Date: 03 January 1898
• Docket Number: No. 48,48
• Parties: DEL CASTILLO v. McCONNICO et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

168 U.S. 674

18 S.Ct. 229

42 L.Ed. 622

DEL CASTILLO

v McCONNICO et al.

No. 48.

January 3, 1898.

Wm. Winans Wall, for plaintiff in error.

J. Zach. Spearing, for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the court.

The plaintiff in error, who was plaintiff in the trial court and appellant in the supreme court of Louisiana, prosecutes this writ of error to the judgment of the supreme court of Louisiana, affirming a decision of the trial court. The suit was commenced in the civil district court of the parish of Orleans to recover a square of ground situated in the city of New Orleans, the proceeding being known under the Louisiana Code as a 'petitory action.' Code Prac. La. art. 43 et seq. The petition alleged the ownership by the plaintiff of the square of ground, and averred that the defendant McConnico was in possession, and claiming title thereto. It alleged that the source from which the defendant asserted his title to have been deraigned was a tax sale made by a state tax collector in November, 1885, to enforce delinquent state taxes for the years 1876, 1877, and 1878, at which sale Orloff Lake was the purchaser. It was averred that Lake sold the property thus bought by him, in December, 1885, to one Lallance, who, in January, 1891, sold it to Lang; that he in turn sold, in February, 1892, to Fitzpatrick and Reese, each in equal undivided proportions; and that each of them, in 1893 and 1894, respectively, conveyed their undivided interest to the defendant McConnico. The petition charged that the tax sale upon which the title of the defendant rested was absolutely void, because, although the property belonged to the petitioner, whose name was Rafael Maria Del Castillo, the taxes thereon for the years 1876, 1877, and 1878, to enforce the payment of which the tax sale had been made, were assessed in the name of R. Castillo. It was also alleged that the tax sale was void because, in the advertisement which preceded it, and which was made by the Louisiana law a prerequisite to a valid sale, the property was described as belonging to Rafael Maria Del Castillo, or her estate and heirs; that, as petitioner was a male person, the adding to the name the words 'or her estate and heirs' caused the advertisement to be nothing worth, and the sale thereunder to be null. The various acts of sale in the chain of title from Lake, the purchaser at the tax sale, to the defendant McConnico, were referred to in the petition, which prayed that not only the tax sale, but all these various transfers between the several parties, be declared to be void, and the petitioner be recognized as the owner of the property, and entitled to the possession thereof.

McConnico, the defendant, by answer asserted the validity of his title, and called his vendor in warranty, who in turn, by answer, became a defendant in the cause, set up the validity of his title, and called his vendor in warranty, and so on down to and including Lallance, the transferee from Lake, who bought at the tax sale. All the defendants who were called in warranty averred that they were purchasers in good faith for adequate value, one alleging that, after contracting to buy the property from his vendor, he became doubtful about the validity of the tax sale, and had declined to carry out his contract, and that in a suit brought against him to compel compliance a final decree had passed between himself and his vendor adjudging the title to be valid, and compelling him to become the purchaser under his agreement, the price paid being the full value of the property. Another of the defendants averred that, after his purchase of the property, finding that it had been forfeited to the state of Louisiana for taxes due by Castillo subsequent to the years to enforce which the tax sale had been made, he had paid the sum of the taxes, and thus held the property, not only under the tax sale, but under the title which the state of Louisiana had acquired by forfeiting the property, and which inured to his benefit in consequence of his having made the redemption. One of the defendants (McConnico) specifically pleaded by way of exception the conclusive presumptions created by Act No. 82 of 1884, as debarring the court from considering the errors in the assessment and sale which were alleged in the petition. Two of the other defendants, reserving the defenses set up in their respective answers, excepted on the ground of no cause of action. The Act No. 82 of 1884, which was necessarily pleaded by McConnico's execption, and the consideration of which was also presented by the exceptions of no cause of action filed by the two other defendants, was substantially as follows: It made it the duty of the tax collectors to advertise for sale at public auction 'all property on which there remained unpaid taxes due to the state prior to December 1, 1879.' It provided for 30 days' advertisement, and directed the tax collectors, where property was bought at a tax sale, to make a deed thereof to the purchaser, and the deed thus to be made the statute said 'shall be prima facie evi- dence of the following facts: 1st. That the property conveyed was subject to taxation; 2d. That none of the taxes for which said property was offered were paid, and said deed shall be conclusive evidence of the following facts: 1st. That the property was assessed according to law; 2d. That the taxes were levied according to law; 3d. That the property was advertised according to law; 4th. That the property was adjudicated and sold as stated in said deed; and, 5th. That all the prerequisites of the law were complied with by all the officers from the assessment up to and including the execution and registry of the deed to said purchaser; and duly certified copies of said deeds shall be full proof without further evidence of all contained therein.' Acts La. 1884, p. 104.

The trial court heard the exceptions separately from the merits, and overruled them. The case was subsequently tried, and judgment was rendered in favor of the defendants, rejecting the demand of the plaintiff. This judgment was, on appeal, affirmed by the supreme court of the state of Louisiana. Castillo v. McConnico, 47 La. Ann. 1473, 17 South. 868. The court, in its opinion, which is a part of the record in this cause (Egan v. Hart, 165 U. S. 187, 189, 17 Sup. Ct. 300), after deciding that the tax sale in question was authorized by the state statute, said:

'It is argued on behalf of the plaintiff that the property was not properly assessed for taxes prior to 1879, because the assessment was in the name of R. Castillo, instead of Rafael Maria Del Castillo. We are relieved of the necessity of passing on the question of the sufficiency of this assessment. The act of 1884 makes the deed conclusively of the sufficiency of the assessment of the property sold under it. The question of the competency of this legislation in this respect has been be ore this court on repeated occasions. The argument now addressed to us against the constitutionality and interpretation of the act must be viewed as directed against a series of decisions of this court. To those decisions we must adhere, and hold the act precludes the inquiry. In re Lake, 40 La. Ann. 142, 3 South. 479; In re Douglas, 41 La. Ann. 765, 6 South, 675; Breaux v. Negrotto, 43 La. Ann. 430, 9 South. 502 et seq.'

Referring to the 30-days advertisement which preceded the tax sale, the court said: 'In this case the advertisement gave the full name of plaintiff, adding 'her estate or heirs.' In our view, the advertisement conformed to the requirement of the act.'

The defendant in error asserts that we have no jurisdiction to review the decision of the state court, because no federal question appears by the record to have been raised either in the trial court or in the supreme court of Louisiana, and because no question of that nature was decided in either of these courts, or, if a federal controversy was passed upon by the supreme court of the state, the decree of that court is sufficiently sustained, apart from any federal question which may have been referred to in the opinion. To the contrary, the plaintiff in error contends that a federal question was necessarily involved in, and was passed on, by the decision below, and that the issue so determined was there duly presented for consideration. The first of these propositions is thus evolved: The defects asserted to exist in the tax assessment and sale were, it is claimed, so radical in their nature that they would, if they had been considered, have caused the assessment and sale to amount to a denial of due process of law under the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. From this premise is deduced the conclusion that the action of the state supreme court in refusing to consider the proof as to the existence of the defects was equivalent to taking property without due process of law. In other words, the argument is that the decision below, in effect, held that by virtue of the presumption engendered by the Louisiana act of 1884, and arising from the tax collector's deed, the plaintiff was estopped from claiming his property, even although there had been no assessment and no sale at all. While it is conceded that the federal question, which is thus asserted to be necessarily involved in and embraced by the decision of the supreme court of Louisiana, does not appear to have been raised on the record either in the trial court or the supreme court, this fact is claimed to be immaterial. The system of practice prevailing in Louisiana, it is argued, rendered it impossible to place the federal question on the record in the strict sense of the word, and caused it to be possible only to present such issue by means of the brief of counsel filed in the supreme court of the state before the hearing. This brief, duly certified by the clerk of the supreme court of the state of Louisiana, has been presented, and it is...