U.S.A. v. 8.0 Acres of Land
| Citation | 197 F.3d 24 |
| Decision Date | 02 August 1999 |
| Docket Number | N,No. 98-2257,98-2257 |
| Parties | (1st Cir. 1999) UNITED STATES, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. 8.0 ACRES OF LAND, MORE OR LESS, SITUATED IN BARNSTABLE COUNTY, COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS; RAYMOND W. COBB, Defendants MARY VIRGINIA BRANDT RUXTON; ESTATE OF JEAN STEVENSON CLARK; NORMAN S. ROSE; ELMER Q. ROSE; AUSTIN L. ROSE, ESTATE OF PRISCILLA L. ROSE; JOHN D. HALLISEY, Defendants, Appellees ROGER TREAT JACKSON, JR.; MARGERY JACKSON CHAMBERS; BETSEY JACKSON PATTERSON; BARBARA JACKSON ALLGEIER, Defendants, Appellants ARTHUR C. CROCE Appellant. UNITED STATES, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. 8.0 ACRES OF LAND, MORE OR LESS, SITUATED IN BARNSTABLE COUNTY, COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS; RAYMOND W. COBB, Defendants MARY VIRGINIA BRANDT RUXTON; ESTATE OF JEAN STEVENSON CLARK; NORMAN S. ROSE; ELMER Q. ROSE; AUSTIN L. ROSE; ESTATE OF PRISCILLA L. ROSE; JOHN D. HALLISEY, Defendants, Appellants ROGER TREAT JACKSON, JR.; MARGERY JACKSON CHAMBERS; BETSEY JACKSON PATTERSON; BARBARA JACKSON ALLGEIER, Defendants, Appellees, ARTHUR C. CROCE, Appellee. o. 98-2313. . Heard |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit) |
APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS. Hon. Mark L. Wolf, U.S. District Judge.
John D. Hallisey for Mary Virginia Brandt Ruxton et al.
John T. Stahr, Dept. of Justice, with whom Lois J Schiffer, Asst. Attorney General, Donald K. Stern, United States Attorney and George B. Henderson, II, Asst. United States Attorney, John A. Bryson and Joy Ryan, Attorneys, Dept. of Justice were on brief, for appellee United States.
Arthur C. Croce, for Roger Treat Jackson, Jr., et al. and pro se.
Before Selya, Circuit Judge, Cyr, Senior Circuit Judge, and Lipez, Circuit Judge.
Mary Brandt Ruxton, the estate of Jean Stevenson Clark, Norman S. Rose, Elmer Q. Rose, Austin L. Rose, and the estate of Priscilla L. Rose (collectively the "Ruxton heirs" or "Ruxton claimants") appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts establishing the interest of several dozen claimants in a condemnation award. The Ruxton heirs argue that, in addition to the share awarded to them by the trial court, they are entitled to claim the interest of absent heirs who did not appear in court and whose existence, in some cases, cannot be confirmed (the "absent heirs"). The Ruxton heirs claim that the district court deprived them of this entitlement by ruling that the unclaimed funds would escheat to the United States. The Ruxton heirs also argue that the trial court awarded inadequate attorneys' fees under the common fund doctrine. Arthur C. Croce, an attorney representing different claimants in an earlier, related, action, also appeals, asserting that the trial court erred in concluding that he was not entitled to attorneys' fees in the instant case.
We affirm the district court's order, finding that it did not escheat funds to the United States and that it properly apportioned the condemnation award according to largely uncontested genealogical evidence. Pursuant to that order, the Ruxton heirs may still claim that they are entitled to collect a portion of the award reserved for the absent heirs. Their entitlement to the funds of the absent heirs is, therefore, not yet ripe for our resolution. We likewise affirm the district court's judgment as to attorneys' fees.
The instant dispute has a long history, discussed also in our decision in Cadorette v. United States, 988 F.2d 215 (1st Cir. 1993). Here, we sketch the outlines, focusing on the specifics relevant to this dispute.
In 1972, the United States purchased eight acres of land in Truro, Massachusetts (the "eight acres") for inclusion in the Cape Cod National Seashore. Regrettably, the seller of the property, Elizabeth Freeman, owned only a small fraction of the land she purported to convey. Elizabeth's great grandfather, Edmund Freeman (referred to as "Edmund the Elder"), had owned 100 percent of the land when he died intestate in 1870. At his death, his three surviving children and the direct descendants of his fourth child each received an undivided twenty-five percent interest in the property. We shall refer to these four lines as "Charles," "Betsy I," "Edmund II," and "Richard Sr." These four twenty-five percent interests continued to descend over the next century, through more than 100 heirs, most of whom did not know that they owned an interest in the eight acres.
The defects in the land sale came to light in 1984, when Jean Stevenson Clark sued the United States pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2409(a) to "quiet title" to what she claimed was her share in the eight acres. Soon, others intervened in the lawsuit, all claiming that they too were heirs of Edmund the Elder and thus owned a share of the property that Elizabeth had sold to the government. The trial court (Skinner, J.) divided the interests in the property based on its reading of the Massachusetts law governing descent and distribution. See Cadorette v. United States, 1990 WL 149979 (No. 84-2428-S) (D. Mass Sept. 18, 1990). The United States appealed, arguing that the trial court misapplied Massachusetts law. While the appeal was pending, the United States filed a complaint in condemnation pursuant to 40 U.S.C. § 257, seeking to acquire whatever interest in the land that it did not own already.
On appeal, we concluded that the trial court had properly distributed the interests of two of the four original heirs to the eight acres, Charles and Richard Sr. See Cadorette v. United States, 988 F.2d 215 (1st Cir. 1993). That part of the judgment was final. But we vacated the trial court's decision to distribute the interest of the other two original heirs, Betsy I and Edmund II, solely to those litigants who were presently before it. We observed that the district court had learned "very little" about these two lines and that the record contained "no evidence of any significant effort to locate, or to provide notice to, the descendants of Betsy I or Edmund II." Id. at 219, 221. Given the sparsity of information, the district court had inappropriately presumed that Betsy I and Edmund II's lines had died out, and it had been particularly inappropriate to presume that they had died out during the one seven-year period under which the parties before the court would be entitled, under Massachusetts law, to their entire interest in the land. See id.
In Cadorette, we declined to determine "precisely how Massachusetts law ought to apply" because the government had since filed a condemnation action. Id. at 222. We ruled that the initiation of condemnation proceedings mooted the "quiet title" dispute, and thus displaced any further need for the trial court to determine the interest of Betsy I and Edmund II in the quiet title action. By filing a condemnation action, the government would acquire the fifty percent interest in the eight acres that had passed through Betsy I and Edmund II upon payment of "just compensation." See id. at 222-226. We ruled that upon a further search for heirs of Betsy I and Edmund II, "the district court should determine afresh whom to compensate for those shares." Id. at 222.
In the condemnation proceedings that followed our decision in Cadorette, the parties stipulated that the "just compensation" for Betsy I and Edmund II's fifty percent interest in the eight acres was $162,000. The issue turned, once again, to distribution. The United States presented the findings of its expert genealogist, George M. Dallas, who had authored a report tracing the devolution of ownership interests of Betsy I and Edmund II (the "Dallas Report"). Although Dallas identified some direct descendants of Betsy I and Edmund II who had inherited an interest in the property, the information about these lines was still incomplete. For example, Dallas learned that Betsy I had eleven children between 1830 and 1854 and that she left her estate to thirteen children and grandchildren. What became of all of these heirs, however, was (and is) unknown. For example, the Dallas Report concluded that the "Heirs of William Edward Sargent" (Betsy I's grandson) were entitled to a specific share of the eight acres, but it failed to specify who those heirs were.
The Ruxton heirs did not contest Dallas's genealogical findings. They did, however, file motions arguing that the court should award them the shares of heirs whose existence was unknown and who had failed to appear in court. They argued that given the failure of other parties to appear, the trial court should conclude that the Ruxton heirs were the closest heirs with a claim to the property and, consequently, award them the interests of the absent parties pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 190 § 3, governing the intestate descent and distribution of land.
On September 28, 1998, the district court (Wolf, J.) entered an order termed "Final Judgment of Distribution and Entitlement" (the "Distribution"). The Distribution divided the condemnation proceeds according to the Dallas Report, with only minor exceptions not relevant here. Paragraph one of the order distributed a portion of the award to the Ruxton heirs, and other parties before the court, based on the percent that the Dallas Report stated they had inherited. Paragraph two specified the interests of the absent parties. Some of these absent parties were identified by name and awarded a specific share of the condemnation proceeds. Other absent parties, due to the incomplete information in the Dallas report, were identified merely as heirs of various Betsy I and Edmund II sub-lines about which little information was known after the late 1800s or early 1900s. For example, the court awarded the "Heirs of Amy Swett Higgins" approximately three percent of the proceeds. Dallas had determined that Amy Higgins died on ...
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