City of Miami v. St. Joe Paper Co.

• Decision Date: 05 October 1978
• Docket Number: No. 51775,51775
• Citation: 364 So.2d 439
• Parties: CITY OF MIAMI, a Florida Corporation, Petitioner, v. ST. JOE PAPER COMPANY, a Florida Corporation, Southeast Properties, Inc., a Florida Corporation, Hugh E. Matheson, Jr., Individually, and Sally S. Dommerich, formerly Sally S. Matheson, Individually, Respondents.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 439

364 So.2d 439

CITY OF MIAMI, a Florida Corporation, Petitioner, v. ST. JOE PAPER COMPANY, a Florida Corporation, Southeast Properties, Inc., a Florida Corporation, Hugh E. Matheson, Jr., Individually, and Sally S. Dommerich, formerly Sally S. Matheson, Individually, Respondents.

No. 51775.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Oct. 5, 1978.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 14, 1978.

Guy B. Bailey, Jr. and Jesse C. Jones of Bailey & Dawes, Miami, for petitioner.

Wm. P. Simmons, Jr. and Eric B. Meyers of Shutts & Bowen, Miami, and Marion E. Sibley of Sibley, Giblin, Levenson & Glaser, Miami Beach, for St. Joe Paper Co.

Joseph P. Klock, Jr. of Steel, Hector & Davis, Miami, for Southeast Properties, Inc.

Edmund P. Russo of Russo, Van Doren & Allen, Coral Gables, for Hugh E. Matheson, Jr.

Nancy G. Linnan, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and J. Kendrick Tucker, Asst. Atty. Gen., Tallahassee for Reubin O'D. Askew, as Governor of the State of Florida.

Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen. of Florida, amicus curiae.

Chesterfield Smith, Tallahassee, Julian Clarkson, Fort Myers, of Holland & Knight, Tallahassee, for amicus curiae.

J. Richard Harris of Scott, Burk, Royce, Harris & Loucks, Palm Beach, for The Florida Bar, amicus curiae.

ADKINS, Justice.

This cause is here on petition for writ of certiorari supported by certificate of the District Court of Appeal, Third District, that its decision reported in 347 So.2d 622 is one which involves a question of great public interest. We have jurisdiction. See Florida Constitution, Article V, Section 3(b)(3).

Petitioner has attacked the constitutionality of Florida Statutes, Chapter 712, the Marketable Record Title Act. Also involved in this case is the question of whether an interloping or wild deed could constitute a root of title.

Petitioner, hereinafter referred to as the city, filed a complaint to quiet its title to a tract of land on the north side of the Miami River at or near the river's entrance into Biscayne Bay. Upon motion, the amended complaint was dismissed on the ground that it appeared upon the face of the complaint that the city's claim was barred by the Marketable Record Title Act. The District Court of Appeal, in its opinion, recited the following history of the title, as described in the city's complaint:

". . . 1. In 1845, the State of Florida acquired from the United States the lands under navigable waters.

"2. By Warranty Deed recorded December 15, 1898, Henry M. Flagler conveyed to the Florida East Coast Hotel Corporation portions of the mainland north of the Miami River and adjacent to Biscayne Bay:

'containing fourteen acres, more or less, together with all and singular the riparian rights and submerged lands appertaining thereto.'

"3. By a special act of the Florida Legislature on June 2, 1919, the State of Florida granted to the City of Miami 'for municipal purposes only, all its rights, title and interest . . . to all submerged lands, including waterfront and riparian rights' to an area which included the mouth of the Miami River. The statutory grant included the following section:

" 'Sec. 2. That this grant shall not affect any other grant heretofore made to any individual or corporation and nothing herein shall be construed as depriving any riparian owner or proprietor of any rights under the laws of this State.'

"4. Beginning in 1920, the Florida East Coast Hotel Corporation bulkheaded and filled a portion of the property in question but left a yacht basin.

"5. On January 10, 1944, the St. Joe Paper Company (one of the defendants) recorded a warranty deed from the Florida East Coast Hotel Corporation which conveyed to it all of the lands with which we are here concerned including the yacht basin which was then in existence. * * * Some time after 1944, St. Joe filled and bulkheaded the yacht basin.

"6. All the defendants other than St. Joe claim under recorded deeds from St. Joe Paper Company subsequent to the 1944 deed to St. Joe Paper Company.

"7. On February 3, 1949, St. Joe recorded a plat (attached to the complaint) of the lands involved. This plat was approved by the City of Miami prior to recordation." 347 So.2d at 623 (Fla.1977).

The Marketable Record Title Act is a comprehensive plan for reform in conveyancing procedures. It is a curative act in that it may operate to correct certain defects which have arisen in the execution of instruments in the chain of title. Curative statutes reach back on past events to correct errors or irregularities and to render valid and effective attempted acts which would be otherwise ineffective for the purpose the parties intended. They operate to complete a transaction which the parties intended to accomplish but carried out imperfectly.

The Marketable Record Title Act is also a statute of limitations in that it requires stale demands to be asserted within a reasonable time after a cause of action has accrued. It prescribes a period within which a right may be enforced.

The Marketable Record Title Act is also a recording act in that it provides for a simple and easy method by which the owner of an existing old interest may preserve it. If he fails to take the step of filing the notice as provided, he has only himself to blame if his interest is extinguished. The legislature did not intend to arbitrarily wipe out old claims and interests without affording a means of preserving them and giving a reasonable period of time within which to take the necessary steps to accomplish that purpose.

This court in Mahood v. Bessemer Properties, Inc., 154 Fla. 710, 18 So.2d 775 (1944), held that the legislature may legitimately use a recording statute as a means of getting rid of stale claims. Florida Statutes 695.20, enacted in 1941, voided contracts for the purchase of lands which were left by the collapse of the Florida Real Estate boom of the 1920's. Under the terms of the statute, persons who had contracted to purchase land prior to a certain date, but had not placed a deed on record or obtained a decree and were not in possession, were declared to have no interest in the land unless they had given notice of their claims by recordation in one of several ways specified and within six months from the adoption of the statute.

Catsman, the Marketable Record Title Act and Uniform Title Standards, Volume 3, Florida Real Property Practice (1965) Section 6.2 describes the nature of the act as follows:

"The chief purpose of the act is to extinguish stale claims and ancient defects against the title to real property, and, accordingly, limit the period of search. The act is different from a statute of limitations. In a statute of limitations a claim of a vested, present interest is cut off because of the claimant's failure to sue. If suit is not filed, the claim is lost. By the Marketable Record Title Act, any claim or interest, vested or contingent, present or future, is cut off unless the claimant preserves his claim by filing a notice within a 30-year period. See § 6.5. If a notice is not filed, the claim is lost. The act also goes beyond a curative act. Curative legislation only corrects certain minor or technical defects through the passage of time, whereas under the Marketable Record Title Act, most defects or clouds on title beyond the period of 30 years are removed and the purchaser is made secure in his transaction."

This court has acknowledged the constitutionality of the act in Marshall v. Hollywood, Inc., 236 So.2d 114 (Fla.1970), and Odom v. Deltona Corporation, 341 So.2d 977 (Fla.1976). We now specifically hold that the Marketable Record Title Act is constitutional.

Courts of other states have ruled that similar marketable title acts are constitutional. See Wichelman v. Messner, 250 Minn. 88, 83 N.W.2d 800 (1957) (in depth discussion of the Act's constitutionality); Tesdell v. Hanes, 248 Iowa 742, 82 N.W.2d 119, 123 (1957) ("We are satisfied the legislature had ample authority to enact a limitation . . . subject to a condition that a reasonable time must elapse before it becomes effective."); Lane v. Traveler's Insurance Company, 230 Iowa 973, 299 N.W. 553, 555 (1941) ("little doubt of the desirability of statutes giving greater effect and stability to record titles.") See also discussion in Note, Constitutionality of Market Title Legislation, 47 Iowa L.Rev. 413, 428-29 (1962).

Other decisions by this court upholding the constitutionality of similar legislative enactments make it clear that the Act can constitutionally be applied to bar the city's claim. In Mahood v. Bessemer Properties, Inc., supra, this court upheld the constitutionality of the application, to a purchaser under a 1925 contract, of a 1941 act which removed from titles to realty the clouds of unperformed contracts of record unless suit be brought within six months. In In Re Estate of Brown, 117 So.2d 478 (Fla.1960), this court held constitutional the application, to a claim arising before its passage, of a 1953 statute which barred claims against an estate after three years. In H. K. L. Realty Corporation v. Kirtley, 74 So.2d 876 (Fla.1954), this court upheld the constitutionality of the application of a twenty-year statute of limitations to mortgages on a given date after one year from such given date on the ground that a reasonable time is provided for the enforcement of a cause of action before the restriction becomes effective. See Buck v. Triplett, 159 Fla. 772, 32 So.2d 753, 754-55 (1947) where the court said:

"We are committed to the rule that statutes of this nature (statute of limitations) are good where a reasonable time is allowed to prosecute an asserted right."

and Campbell v. Horne, 147 Fla. 523, 3 So.2d 125, 126 (1941) where the court said:

"The law is well settled by decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and in other jurisdictions, that statutes of limitation affecting existing rights are not unconstitutional if a reasonable time is given for the enforcement of the right before the bar takes effect."

The city contends...