Meeks v. Olpherts

• Decision Date: 01 October 1879
• Citation: 100 U.S. 564,25 L.Ed. 735
• Parties: MEEKS v. OLPHERTS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

100 U.S. 564

100 U.S. 564

25 L.Ed. 735

MEEKS v. OLPHERTS.

October Term, 1879

ERROR to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of California.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

Mr. Montgomery Blair for the plaintiff in error.

Mr. S. M. Wilson, contra.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.

This action was brought, Sept. 30, 1872, by Meeks against Olpherts and others to recover possession of a hundred-vara lot in the city of San Francisco.

On a stipulation waiving a jury, the case was submitted to the court, which, on its findings of fact incorporated in this record, further found as a conclusion of law that the plaintiff's action was barred by sect. 190 of the Probate Act of California. Judgment was rendered for the defendants. Meeks sued out this writ of error.

The material facts in the case are few and easily understood.

George Harlan died intestate July 8, 1850, seised of the title to the lot in question, except as that title may have been nominally in the United States. By the act of Congress of 1864 his title was confirmed, and it inured to the benefit of any one rightfully holding under him.

On the 19th of August, 1850, Henry C. Smith was duly appointed administrator of Harlan's estate, and having afterwards resigned, Benjamin Aspinall was appointed in his place, June 15, 1855.

On the seventh day of January, 1856, Aspinall, by an order of the Probate Court, sold the lot in question, with many others. Under this sale the defendants, or those under whom they claim, entered into possession, which they have held uninterruptedly to the present time. Aspinall remained administrator until May 12, 1864, when he settled up his accounts and was discharged. Joel Harlan and Lucien B. Huff, appointed in his place, are now administrators.

On the 6th of November, 1869, an order of distribution of the estate was made in the Probate Court, by which the lot in question was distributed to plaintiff. To this proceeding no objection is made as to its regularity.

It will thus be seen that the defendants had purchased the lot in controversy at a sale ordered by the Probate Court, and had paid their money for it, and been in the peaceable adverse possession of it since 1856, a period of sixteen years; and the court held that, whether the probate sale was valid so as to confer title or not, the Statute of Limitations applicable to such cases was a bar to plaintiff's right of recovery.

As the only question in the case is the one thus stated by the Circuit Court, and as the Supreme Court of California had decided that the probate sale was invalid and conferred no title, we proceed to examine the defence of the statute.

The special statute of limitations of three years, contained in the Probate Act of California, is as follows:——

'SECT. 190. No action for the recovery of any estate sold by an executor or administrator, under the provisions of this chapter, shall be maintained by any heir or other person claiming under the deceased testator or intestate, unless it be commenced within three years next after the sale.

'SECT. 191. The preceding section shall not apply to minors or others, under any legal disability to sue at the time when the right of action shall first accrue; but all such persons may commence such action at any time within three years after the removal of the disability.'

As the plaintiff in this case claims title as heir and by purchase from other heirs of the decedent, and brings his suit sixteen years after an administrator's sale sanctioned by a probate court, it would seem at first blush that the case came within the provision of the first section.

Counsel for plaintiff, however, has argued with much earnestness and force——

1. That no suit could be brought by the heirs, or any one claiming through them, until the order of distribution was made, because until that time, or until administration was closed, the right of possession was in the administrator.

2. That until then the heirs were under a disability, which by sect. 191 protected their right of action from the operation of sect. 190.

The first proposition, and, indeed, the argument of the learned counsel, concedes, that by virtue of the statutes of California the real estate of a person dying intestate comes to the possession and control of his administrator as personal property does, and that while the administrator can only sell real estate upon an order of the Probate Court, the possession and control, the perception of the rents and profits, and the right to sue to recover possession of it when held adversely, belongs solely to the administrator. Indeed, a section or two of the Probate Act, which we copy, makes this very plain.

'SECT. 114. The executor or administrator shall have the right to the possession of all the real as well as the personal estate of the deceased, and may receive the rents and profits of the real estate, until the estate shall be settled, or until delivered over by the order of the Probate Court to the heirs or devisees, and shall keep in good tenantable repairs all houses, buildings, and fixtures thereon which are under his control.'

'SECT. 195. Actions for the recovery of any property, real or personal, or for the possession thereof, and all actions founded upon contracts, may be maintained by and against executors and administrators, in all cases in which the same might have been maintained by or against their respective testators or intestates.'

And by section 194 of the Probate Act of California the administrator is again required to 'take into his possession all the estate of the deceased, real and personal.'

While it must be conceded that no right of action existed in the heirs of Harlan until the order of distribution, the reason of this is that the right of action to recover possession of the lots wrongfully held under the invalid probate sale was in the administrator. He was the representative of the rights of the heirs and of the creditors of the estate, and as such had the same power to sue for and recover the lot as if he had been the intestate himself. Not only was it his right, but it was his exclusive right and his duty. For any failure to perform this duty he laid himself liable to the heirs, or any one else injured by that failure.

Nor can it be said that either this right or this duty to sue for and recover possession of the lot was lost or abridged by his sale as administrator to the defendants. Instances are numerous of persons making sales that are invalid, avoiding them by the very act of bringing an action of ejectment. Such are the cases of infants and married women who have made conveyances and received the consideration, whose acts are void or voidable by reason of infancy or of defective acknowl edgments of the deeds.

There was, then, up to the date of the order of distribution, or until it was barred by the statute, a right in the administrator of the estate of Harlan to sue for and recover the possession sought in the present action.

This being so, it is not easy to perceive why that right of action was not barred in three years from Jan. 7, 1856, the day on which defendants purchased and took possession. This would make the bar complete Jan. 7, 1859. During all that time Aspinall was administrator and for five years afterwards, and nothing obstructed his legal right to sue for and recover the possession. Nor is the case otherwise if the right of action began with the relinquishment of title by the act of Congress of 1864.

It is argued, however, that sect. 190 does not apply to suits brought by the administrator, and, therefore, the statute does not run against the right of action while it remains in him.

The arguments is that the language used, namely, 'no such action shall be maintained by any heir, or other person claiming under the deceased testator or intestate,' means by an heir or one holding under the heir, and...