State Mineral Lease Commission v. Lawrence

• Decision Date: 03 December 1934
• Docket Number: 31468
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE MINERAL LEASE COMMISSION v. LAWRENCE et al

157 So. 897

171 Miss. 442

STATE MINERAL LEASE COMMISSION v. LAWRENCE et al

No. 31468

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 3, 1934

Division B

Suggestion Of Error Overruled December 17, 1934.

APPEAL from the chancery court of Hinds county HON. V. J. STRICKER Chancellor.

Bill in chancery by S. B. Lawrence and others against the State Mineral Lease Commission. From the decree, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Affirmed.

W. W. Pierce, Assistant Attorney-General, for appellant.

The state mineral lease commission was created by chapter 114 of the General Laws of Mississippi 1932.

A suit against the mineral lease commission is a suit against the state.

Stanley v. Schwalby, 147 U.S. 508, 37 L.Ed. 529; Stanley v. Schwalby, 162, U.S. 255, 40 L.Ed. 960; White v. Alabama Insane Asylum, 35 So. 454.

The chancery court was without jurisdiction of the defendant, state mineral lease commission, in that the Legislature has no authorized suit to be brought or maintained against it, and the assumption of jurisdiction by the court, and permitting the suit to be maintained, is paramount to maintaining a suit against the state without legislative authority.

Mississippi Centennial Exposition Co. v. Luderbach et al., 123 Miss. 828; Corinth to Gulf Highway et al. v. Carothers & Co., 129 Miss. 645; Mississippi Live Stock Sanitary Board v. Williams et al., 133 Miss. 98; Ayres v. Board of Trustees, 134 Miss. 363; Nabors et al., Trustees, v. Smith et al., 135 Miss. 608; Stringer v. Roper, 152 Miss. 559; City of Grenada v. Grenada County, 115 Miss. 831; Hall v. State, 79 Miss. 38; State Highway Commission v. Gully, 145 So. 351, 167 Miss. 631; State Highway Commission v. Knight, 154 So. 263; Hjort Royalty Co. v. Trustees of the University of Wyoming, 222 P. 9.

In pressing the point that suit cannot be maintained against appellant, I am not unmindful of section 5979 of Mississippi Code of 1930, authorizing suits in certain instances against the state. This section, however, would not authorize the maintenance of a suit in the nature of the instant case before the court.

State v. Dinkins, 77 Miss. 874.

W. H. Hewitt and Earl Brewer, both of Jackson, for appellees.

A holding that these officers cannot be made defendants in this particular case would be a denial of rights guaranteed to appellees by our state and federal constitutions.

Article 14, U. S. Constitution; Section 17, Mississippi Constitution; Tindal v. Wesley, 167 U.S. 204, 42 L.Ed. 137, 143; U. S. v. Lee, 106 U.S. 198, 27 L.Ed. 174.

This proceeding is not virtually a suit against the state, but a suit against the defendant state officers to cancel clouds on appellees' title to land and thus prevent impairment of claimants' property rights.

25 R. C. L. 414; U. S. v. Lee, 106 U.S. 199; 27 L.Ed. 171; U. S. v. Peters, 5 Cranch, 115; Wilcox v. Jackson, 13 Pet. 498; Osborn v. U. S. Bank, 9 Wheat. 738; Georgia v. Madrazo, 1 Pet. 110; Ex parte Milligan 4 Wall 2, 71 U. S. XVIII, 281; Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168 (XXVI, 377); Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Maryland v. Trustees of the University of Wyoming et al., 16 F.2d 150; 59 C. J. 310, 314; Hopkins v. Clemson Agricultural College, 221 U.S. 636, 55 L.Ed. 890; Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 270, 291, 29 L.Ed. 185, 193, 5 S.Ct. 903, 962.

Those cases are against the state in which the decrees require, by affirmative official action on the part of the defendants, the performance of an obligation which belongs to the state in its political capacity, while those actions at law or suits in equity maintained against defendants who, while claiming to act as officials of the state, violate and invade the personal and property rights of plaintiff under color or authority unconstitutional and void, are not against the state.

White Eagle Oil & Refining Co. v. Gunderson, Governor of the State of South Dakota et a., 205 N.W. 614, 43 A. L. R. 397; Hagood v. Southern, 117 U.S. 52, 29 L.Ed. 805; Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 35 L.Ed. 363.

If this suit is one against the state, it is nevertheless authorized by the Legislature.

Section 1381, Code of 1930.

Argued orally by W. W. Pierce, for appellant, and by W. H. Hewitt, for appellee.

OPINION

Griffith, J.

The complainants, appellees here, filed their bill in the chancery court alleging that they are the rightful owners of the parcel of land described in the bill; and they deraigned their title thereto by an unbroken chain of conveyances from and including the United States down to themselves. The bill further alleged that the state mineral lease commission, created under chapter 114, Laws 1932, held of record certain deeds of conveyance which are void and of no effect except to cast clouds, doubts, and suspicions upon the true title of complainants; and the bill set out in detail the deeds so held by the commission and the reasons in point of fact which disclosed their invalidity. The members of the commission were made parties defendant, and they appeared and answered. They incorporated in their answer a demurrer upon the ground that the commissioners, in holding the title asserted by them, hold only for the state and as its officers an agents; that they hold or assert no title or claim in or for themselves, and that the suit is therefore one against the state, which has not consented that a suit of this character may be brought against it.

The chancellor overruled the demurrer, heard the case on its merits, found from ample proof that the complainants are the true owners, that the title held in the name of the commissioners is without validity, and awarded the relief prayed in the bill, which was not the broad relief of confirmation of title as against all persons or claimants, but to cancel the deeds held by the commissioners as clouds upon the true title of the complainants; and the commission appeals, and presents as the sole ground of alleged error that the court was without jurisdiction to entertain the suit.

There is no proposition of law which is better settled than the general rule that a sovereign state and its political subdivisions cannot be sued in the courts except upon the express statutory consent of that state. Numerous decisions of this court to that effect may be cited; but it is enough to note that this court, in banc, in a recent case, State v. Woodruff, 170 Miss. 744, 150 So. 760, has so held; and therein overruled a previous decision which had adjudicated that such consent could be worked out of a statute by implication, when express consent was absent from the terms of that statute.

But the rule applies only when the state or its subdivision is actually made a party upon the record, or is actually necessary to be made a party in order to furnish the relief demanded by the suit. It does not apply when the suit is against an officer or agent of the state, and the relief demanded by the suit requires no affirmative official action on the part of the state nor the affirmative discharge of any obligation which belongs to the state in its political capacity, even though the officers or agents who are made defendants disclaim any personal interest in themselves and claim to hold or to act only by virtue of a title of the state and as its agents and servants.

Thus it will be found, as illustrative of what has been above said that nearly all the cases, wherein the rule of immunity from suit against the state, or a subdivision thereof, has been applied and upheld, are those which demanded a money judgment, and wherein the discharge of the judgment, if obtained, would require an appropriation or an expenditure therefrom, which being legislative in its character is a province exclusively of the political departments of the state. And in the less frequent number of eases where no money judgment is demanded, and the rule of immunity is still upheld, it will be found in them that the relief demanded would be,...