Weiss v. Leaon
| Decision Date | 12 December 1949 |
| Docket Number | No. 41134,No. 1,41134,1 |
| Citation | 225 S.W.2d 127,359 Mo. 1054 |
| Parties | WEISS et al. v. LEAON et al |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Roy K. Dietrich, Edwin Earnshaw, Dietrich, Tyler & Davis, Kansas City, for appellants.
Lee E. Cisel, Roscoe C. Van Valkenburgh, Carl R. Johnson, Harry A. Hall, Hammond C. Woods, Cliff Bailey, Kansas City (Cisel, Benton & McLaughlin, Kansas City, Miller, Sheffrey, Van Valkenburgh & Ryder, Kansas City, of counsel), for respondents.
This is an action to enforce a racial restriction agreement or, in the alternative, for damages for breach of such agreement. Under the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161, 3 A.L.R.2d 441, holding that judicial enforcement of such an agreement violates the Fourteenth Amendment, the trial court dismissed the entire action. Racial restriction agreements may no longer be judicially enforced under Shelley v. Kraemer, and the judgment of the trial court dismissing that part of the action was proper.
The only issue before this court now for determination is whether the decision in Shelley v. Kraemer also forecloses a suit for the breach of a racial restriction agreement between parties under such an agreement. We find that Shelley v. Kraemer has not ruled on this issue.
The facts of the case are these. Plaintiffs are white persons who own lots in Santa Fe Place in Kansas City. Defendants Leaon, also white persons, are the owners of a lot at 2630 East 29th Street in Santa Fe Place. Defendants Leaon sold or were about to sell their lot to defendants Street, persons of the Negro race. The lots in Santa Fe Place are subject to a private a restriction agreement to run thirty years from February 5, 1931 which provides that none of the lots may be devised, sold, leased or occupied by Negroes. Plaintiffs and defendants Leaon are parties under the agreement either as original makers or as their successors in interest.
In their original petition plaintiffs sought to enforce the restriction agreement through a decree cancelling any deed which may have been made to the Negro defendants, an injunction restraining the white defendants from conveying their lot to Negroes or from permitting Negroes to occupy it, and an injunction restraining the Negro defendants from occupying the premises.
On the strength of Shelley v. Kraemer the Court dismissed the petition only as to the defendants Street, Negroes, and denied plaintiffs the right to file an amended petition against those defendants.
Plaintiffs' amended petition against defendants Leaon was also dismissed. Thereupon plaintiffs appealed to this court.
The original petition and counts of the amended petition seeking judicial enforcement of the racial restriction agreement were properly dismissed on authority of Shelley v. Kraemer. We do not find the decision of the Supreme Court in the companion case of Hurd v. Hodge, 334 U.S. 24, 68 S.Ct. 847, 92 L.Ed. 1187, is pertinent to this case. That decision deals with the enforcement of a restriction agreement in the District of Columbia by a Federal Court.
Although the trial court denied plaintiffs the right to file an amended petition against defendants Street, Negroes, they persisted in attempting to include those defendants as aversary parties in several counts of their amended petition. Such counts were properly dismissed, and are not now before us for appellate review.
However the amended petition contains a count which appears to state a valid claim. Although it is not as clearly pleaded as it might be, we understand it to be a claim against defendants Leaon only, as parties under the restriction agreement, for damages for their breach of the agreement. We find this is the only issue remaining in the case for our determination, that is whether such a claim might be properly maintained or whether it is foreclosed by Shelley v. Kraemer.
There has been wide discussion of Shelley v. Kraemer in the law reviews. Various authors have read much into the decision and some have anticipated with apparent assurance future action of the United States Supreme Court on the subject of restriction agreements. About the only point which a few authors appear to agree upon is that the scope of the decision is difficult to define now, and to project into the future. See: 61 Harvard Law Review, 1450; 24 Notre Dame Lawyer, 157; 48 Columbia Law Review, 1241; 3 Arkansas Law Review, 96; 21 Southern California Law Review, 358; 16 University of Chicago Law Review, 203.
For a recent case discussing the question of 'state action' under a private housing project see Dorsey et al. v. Stuyvesant Town Corporation et al., N. Y. Court of Appeals, 299 N.Y. 512, 87 N.E.2d 541.
From our own examination of the opinion in Shelley v. Kraemer we find the question for decision as stated therein by the court was the constitutionality of court enforcement of restrictive covenants intended to exclude persons of a designated race or color from ownership or occupancy of real property.
The question was presented by two cases upholding such covenants, one from Missouri, and the other from Michigan. The petitioners before the Supreme Court in both cases were Negroes. They sought a review of the judgments of the state courts which restrained and ousted them from occupying the restricted premises because of their race and color.
In the Supreme Court the petitioners' principal contention was that judicial enforcement of the restrictive agreements constituted state action in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Discussing the application of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court pointed out that its inhibitions were directed against state action only, not against the actios of individuals. The court said: [334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 842.]
Thereafter the opinion deals entirely with the question of judicial enforcement of the restrictions against the Negro petitioners within the purview of the Fourteenth Amendment.
That the Supreme Court was concerned with judicial enforcement of the restrictions against the petitioners because of their race or color is shown by the following excerpts from the opinion:
'These [cases] are cases in which the purposes of the agreements were secured only by judicial enforcement by state courts of the restrictive terms of the agreements.'
'* * * we are called upon to consider whether enforcement by state courts of the restrictive agreements in these cases may be deemed to be the acts of those States; and, if so, whether that action has denied these petitioners the equal protection of the laws which the Amendment was intended to insure.'
'It is clear that but for the active intervention of the state courts, supported by the full panoply of state power, petitioners would have been free to occupy the properties in question without restraint.'
'Rather, these are cases in which the States have made available to such individuals the full coercive power of government to deny to petitioners, on the grounds of race or color, the enjoyment of property rights * * *.'
Finally the Supreme Court reached the following...
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