State v. Schmidt

• Decision Date: 06 February 1913
• Parties: STATE v. SCHMIDT.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

61 So. 293

180 Ala. 374

STATE v. SCHMIDT.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 6, 1913

Appeal from City Court of Talladega; Cecil Browne, Judge.

Statutory ejectment by the State of Alabama against Sudie Schmidt. Judgment for defendant, and the State appeals. Affirmed.

R.C Brickell, Atty. Gen., and R.B. Evins, of Greensboro, for the State.

Knox Acker, Dixon & Sims, of Talladega, for appellee.

McCLELLAN J.

Statutory ejectment.

An agreed statement of facts raises, as was intended, the single question whether adverse possession of sixteenth section school lands, under the Code 1896, § 2794, and its predecessors, was operative to invest title in an adverse holder of such lands under color of title. The contention is that such statutes are invalid, because inconsistent with acts of Congress, including that admitting Alabama as a state in 1819, and because in conflict with the Constitution of the United States and with the several Constitutions of this state in the particulars that Alabama's organic laws touched the subject of the sixteenth section school lands.

Since Long v. Brown, 4 Ala. 622, and Cooper v Roberts, 18 How. 173, 15 L.Ed. 338, contain a full recital of the history of sixteenth section school lands, their legal status and the beneficent motives that inspired the devotion of such lands, or the proceeds of such lands, to purposes of education, there is no occasion to repeat, generally, those matters at this time.

In necessary affirmance of the entire validity of the statutes of limitations with respect to sixteenth section school lands in this state, this court ruled, in Miller v. State, 38 Ala. 600, that title might be acquired by an adverse possession for the requisite period to effect that result, premising that the stated application of the doctrine did not conclude any right of the state; for the state had no property in such lands. The pertinent pronouncement of Miller v. State, supra, has been since approved in Gaston v. State, 88 Ala. 459, 7 So. 340; Wyatt v. Tisdale, 97 Ala. 594, 12 So. 233; Prestwood v. Watson, 111 Ala. 604, 20 So. 600; and T.C., I. & R.R. Co. v. Linn, 123 Ala. 112, 26 So. 245, 82 Am.St.Rep. 108.

In Wyatt v. Tisdale, supra, the court said (Justice Coleman writing): "The authority of the Legislature to make the statute apply to suits by the state, or for the recovery of sixteenth section lands, is not doubted; and there is no reason why a different construction should be given the statute or a different principle applied when the suit is by the state, or one claiming through the state, than that applied to private persons."

The inspiration of the action taken by the federal government, with respect to sixteenth section lands, was the terms of the cession of Georgia.

In the proposals submitted for acceptance, as conditions to the admission of Alabama to the Union, was this: "First. That the section numbered sixteen in every township, and when such section has been sold, granted, or disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and most contiguous to the same, shall be granted to the inhabitants of such townships for the use of the schools."

This proposal, as were the others, was accepted by Alabama. But there being no entity representative of the inhabitants of townships capable of taking the legal title to the section, it became then vested in the state for the benefit of those for whom the bounty was intended. The state had no property therein, though upon it rested the high public duty to conserve the application of the subject of the grant to the purpose for which it was bestowed. The trust so established was thus defined in Cooper v. Roberts, supra (Justice Campbell writing): "The trusts created by these compacts relate to a subject certainly of universal interest, but of municipal concern, over which the power of the state is plenary and exclusive." (Italics supplied.) See Dunklin County v. Dunklin Co. Court, 23 Mo. 449, 456, 457; Gaston v. State, 5 Or. 48; Supervisors, etc., v. Burchell, 31 Ill. 68.

This was the fundamental conception to which may be referred the stated ruling of this court in Miller v. State. The trust thus accepted by the state was of a personal nature, exalted as that was in the plighted public faith, not a trust fixed upon the land itself by the terms of the grant, and abiding with the land in all events.

Now the grant in Northern Pacific Railway v. Townsend, 190 U.S. 267, 23 Sup.Ct. 671, 47 L.Ed. 1044, was radically different from that of the sixteenth section lands. There the donation was for the...