Tidal Oil Co v. Flanagan, No. 179

• Court: United States Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: TAFT
• Citation: 44 S.Ct. 197,68 L.Ed. 382,263 U.S. 444
• Parties: TIDAL OIL CO. et al. v. FLANAGAN
• Docket Number: No. 179
• Decision Date: 07 January 1924

263 U.S. 444 44 S.Ct. 197 68 L.Ed. 382 TIDAL OIL CO. et al.

v.

FLANAGAN.

No. 179.

Submitted on Motion to Dismiss or Affirm Nov. 19, 1923.

Decided Jan. 7, 1924.

Page 445

Messrs. Preston C. West, A. A. Davidson, Wallace C. Franklin, and Arthur J. Biddison, all of Tulsa, Okl., for plaintiffs in error, in opposition to the motion.

Messrs. Edward H. Chandler and Wm. O. Beall, both of Tulsa, Okl., for defendant in error, in support of the motion.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 445-447 intentionally omitted]

Page 448

Mr. Chief Justice TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.

J. P. Flanagan sued the Tidal Oil Company and Eleanor Arnold in the district court of Creek county, Oklahoma, to quiet his title to two tracts of land therein of 80 acres each. His title was based on a quitclaim deed of Robert Marshall, an allottee and citizen of the Creek Nation, executed in October, 1916, after Marshall had attained his majority and had been discharged from guardianship. The defendants derived their title from the same allottee, but the deed under which they claimed was made by Marshall when he was 14 years old and married, and after he had been granted majority rights by the district court. He subsequently sought to have this deed canceled in a suit in the same court brought by his guardian, but judgment went against him. Defendants insisted that this judgment was conclusive in the case at bar against the plaintiff as subsequent

Page 449

grantee of Marshall. After this judgment, and by way of compromise, gas and oil leases and contracts to convey were made in favor of defendants or their grantors by the guardian and approved by the county court, and these were also relied on to defeat plaintiff's title. The district court gave judgment in favor of Flanagan for the lands and included a heavy recovery for mesne profits. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma affirmed this, but somewhat reduced the amount of recovery. It held that the deed and agreements and leases under which defendants claimed were void because Marshall was a minor when they were made; that the judgment of the district court against him and his guardian in their suit to cancel the first deed was void because it appeared on the face of the record that Marshall was then a minor and that these were allotted lands, of the title to which he could not be divested except in a probate court under procedure required by a state statute and not complied with. The errors here assigned are, first, that the judgment deprived the defendants of their property without due process of law contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment; and, second, that the Supreme Court of the state in holding the judgment and confirmations of the district and county courts to be void, reversed its previous decisions and changed a rule of property of the state upon the faith of which the deed, leases and other contracts set up by defendants were made, and thus impaired their obligation in violation of section 10, article 1, of the federal Constitution.

A motion to dismiss is made by the defendant in error, because the federal questions were too late, in that they were raised for the first time in petitions for rehearing which the court denied without opinion. The record does not sustain this ground in respect to the objection based on the Fourteenth Amendment, because that appears in the assignment of errors filed on the appeal from

Page 450

the district court to the state Supreme Court. The assignment, however, has no substance in it. The parties to this action have been fully heard in the state court in the regular course of judicial proceedings and in such a case the mere fact that the state court reversed a former decision to the prejudice of one party does not take away his property without due process of law. This was expressly held in the case of Central Land Co. v. Laidley, 159 U. S. 103, 112, 16 Sup. Ct. 80, 40 L. Ed. 91. See, also, Morley v. Lake Shore Railway Co., 146 U. S. 162, 171, 13 Sup. Ct. 54, 36 L. Ed. 925; Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U. S. 454, 461, 27 Sup. Ct. 556, 51 L. Ed. 879, 10 Ann. Cas. 689; Delmar Jockey Club v. Missouri, 210 U. S. 324, 335, 28 Sup. Ct. 732, 52 L. Ed. 1080; Bonner v. Gorman, 213 U. S. 86, 91, 29 Sup. Ct. 483, 53 L. Ed. 709; Milwaukee Electric Ry. Co. v. Milwaukee, 252 U. S. 100, 106, 40 Sup. Ct. 306, 64 L. Ed. 476, 10 A. L. R. 892.

A ground for dismissal urged is that the validity of no federal or state statute or authority exercised under the United States or the state, was drawn in question in the state court on the ground of a repugnance to the federal Constitution and hence there is no right to a writ of error under section 237 of the Judicial Code as amended by the Act of September 6, 1916 (39 Stat. 726 [Comp St. § 1214]), and that the only remedy available to the plaintiffs in error was an application to this court for certiorari because they had been denied a right, title, privilege or immunity granted by the federal Constitution. In answer the plaintiffs in error invite attention to an Act of Congress of February 17, 1922 (42 Stat. 366), again amending section 237, reading as follows:

'In any suit involving the validity of a contract wherein it is claimed that a change in the rule of law or construction of statutes by the highest court of a state applicable to such contract would be repugnent to the Constitution of the United States, the Supreme Court shall, upon writ of error, re-examine, reverse, or affirm the final judgment of the highest court of a state in which a decision in the suit could be had, if said claim is made in said

Page 451

court at any time before said final judgment is entered and if the decision is against the claim so made.' Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 1214.

The case before us seems clearly within the foregoing. It does involve the validity of a contract, it is claimed that a change in the rule of law by the highest court of the state applicable to the contract is repugnant to the federal Constitution, and the decision of that court was against the claim.

It has been settled by a long line of decisions,¹ that the provision of section 10, article 1, of the federal Constitution, protecting the obligation of contracts against state action, is directed only against impairment by legislation and not by judgments of courts. The language—'No state shall * * * pass any * * * law impairing the obligation of contracts'—plainly requires such a conclusion. However, the fact that it has been necessary for this court to decide the question so many times is evidence of persistent error in regard to it. Among the cases relied on to sustain the error, are Gelpcke v. Dubuque, 1 Wall. 175, 17 L. Ed. 520; Butz v. Muscatine, 8 Wall. 575, 19 L. Ed. 490; Douglass v. Pike County, 101 U. S. 677, 25 L. Ed. 968; Anderson v. Santa Anna Twp., 116 U. S. 356, 6 Sup. Ct. 413, 29 L. Ed. 633; German Savings Bank v. Franklin County, 128 U. S. 526, 9 Sup. Ct. 159, 32 L. Ed. 519; Rowan v. Runnels, 5 How. 134, 139, 12 L. Ed. 85; and Los Angeles v.

Page 452

Los Angeles City Water Co., 177 U. S. 558, 20 Sup. Ct. 736, 44 L. Ed. 886. These cases were not writs of error to the Supreme Court of a state. They were appeals or writs of error to federal courts where recovery was sought upon municipal or county bonds or some other form of contracts, the validity of which had been sustained by decisions of the Supreme Court of a state prior to their execution, and had been denied by the same court after their issue or making. In such cases the federal courts exercising jurisdiction between citizens of different states held...