New Orleans v. Christmas/Opinion of the Court

by Joseph P. Bradley

United States Supreme Court

131 U.S. 191

New Orleans  v.  Christmas

The complainant's claim in this suit is that the city of New Orleans, as unlawful possessor and vendor of the property, is primarily responsible in the same manner and to the same extent as it would have been if it had never sold any part of it, but had remained in possession of the whl e from the time of its purchase to the present time. The argument is that the city, as vendor, put its grantees into possession, and thus enabled them to keep the complainant out of possession, and is therefore responsible as principal, and not merely as surety or guarantor of its grantees, although the latter position is also assumed. Its liability as, principal is asserted as a fundamental proposition on which the case may be safely rested. Another principle in voked and applied is that, inasmuch as the city of New Orleans claimed the property under the sale of Relf and Chew, although claiming it through the medium of Evariste Blanc, it was a possessor in bad faith, and, as such, accountable, not only for the rents and revenues actually received, but for all that might have been received by the most provident management of the property. The manner in which these assumed principles of law have been applied by the court below in the disposition of the cause will be considered hereafter.

As already stated, the amount of the decree pronounced against the city was $1,925,667.83, of which $1,348,959.91 was for rents and revenues of unimproved property. The remainder $576,707.92-was for rents and revenues of improved and unimproved property found due from the defendants in the suits of Gaines v. Monsseaux et al., and Gaines v. Agnelly et al., before referred to; the amount being somewhat increased by additional interest. The parties in those cases relied on the city to protect them, and appear to have let things take pretty much their own course. As the complainant was allowed, in her first suit against the city of New Orleans, before referred to, to recover all rents and revenues received by the city from each portion of the Blanc tract derived from Clark's estate while it was in possession thereof, the complainant, in her claim before the master in the present case, waived all rents and revenues arising from the tract prior to March 10, 1837, the time when the auction sale was made as before mentioned, but claimed that there had been no adjudication or recovery against the city for any such rents and revenues after that date, except for the five squares referred to in that former suit; and hence she claimed an account for all rents and revenues accruing after the 10th of March, 1837, except with regard to the said five squares, and some few other lots specially designated, which do not require attention here. The master, therefore, in taking his account, assumed that no account of rents and revenues had ever been rendered by the city after the said 10th day of March, 1837, except as aforesaid, and proceeded to charge it with the entire rents and revenues of all the land in the whole tract, (except as aforesaid) from the said date to the time of making the report, without regard to the question whether the city or its grantees were in actual possession or not. The rents and revenues thus charged against the city for unimproved land were not rents and revenues actually received, but fictitious rents and revenues, assessed at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum on 70 per cent. of the amount of the inflated sales of 1837, with interest thereon to the time of making the report; that being what the master deemed a fair equivalent of what the property ought to have produced. We shall see hereafter that the court added to this estimate interest on the other 30 per cent. of the amount of said sales. From the reports of the master we are led to understand that the amounts found due from the defendants in the other suits, aggregating, with interest, $576,707.92, as above stated, was estimated and made up on the same principles which were followed with regard to the unimproved property; not by taking merely the actual rents and revenues received, but adding thereto fictitious amounts which it was supposed might have been received by provident management, and by interest on hypothetical velues in the absence of other evidence of income.

Now, in relation to the prn ciples before referred to, on which the complainant contends that her case may be rested, and which the court seems to have adopted, we have the following observations to make. The first proposition is that the city of New Orleans is primarily liable for all the rents and revenues of the entire tract derived from the Clark estate and purchased from Evariste Blanc, for the entire period since 1837, down to the time of the decree. Leaving out of view, for the present, the secondary liability to which the city may be equitable bound to respond on its warranty of title to its grantees, is it true, in point of law, that the city is primarily liable in the manner above stated, with regard both to the time when it had possession itself, and also to the time when its grantees had the possession? The contrary of this proposition was distinctly deceded by the circuit court in the case of Gaines v. New Orleans, and its decision was affirmed by this court in New Orleans v. Gaines, 15 Wall. 625. It is true that the complainant acquiesced in the decision of the circuit court in that case, and did not appeal; but that only left the decision standing as a precedent against her, all the more effective for such acquiescence. The common law certainly does not recognize any such rule as that contended for. The person who receives the rents and profits is the only person who is to respond for them. It was even made a question in Doe v. Harlow, 12 Adol. & E. 40, and in Doe v. Challis, 17 Q. B. 166, whether the landlord of a tenant in possession was liable for mesne profits. After argument it was decided that he was. But the reason of this is obvious; the tenant's possession is the possession of his landlord. It is true that, by the ancient law, where there was an entire disseisin, the estate was deemed out of the disseisee for the time being, and no intrusion upon the land was a trespass against him, and therefore a grantee of the disseisor, or a second disseisor, was not responsible to the true owner at all, who had to look to his immediate disseisor for damages in an assize. Moore v. Hussey, Hob. 93. But the modern action for mesne profits only lies against the tenant in possession who is cast in an action of ejectment; and where no ejectment has been brought the actual trespasser on the land is the person amenable to an action of trespass quare clausum fregit, or assumpsit for use and occupation, where the trespass is waived. The present case, however, is not to be decided by the rules of the common law. The counsel for the complainant relies on the French or civil law to sustain his position. But no case is cited to show that the rule contended for has ever been adopted in Louisiana. On the contrary, there is a very recent case which decides the contrary. We refer to Gillaspie v. Bank, 35 La. Ann. 779. In that case the bank had foreclosed a mortgage, and bought in the property, and, after three or four years' possession sold it to a third person. More than a year after this sale a suit was brought by a guardian of minor children interested in the land, for a nullity of the sale on foreclosure, and judgment of nullity was rendered, and the sale was set aside, on the ground that in the executory process of the bank two of the joint owners of the property had not been made parties. A suit was then brought against the bank to recover the minors' share of the fruits and rents from the time of the sale under the foreclosure, including the time that the grantee or vendee of the bank had possession, as well as that in which the bank itself had possession. The supreme court of Louisiana held that this could not be done; that it was a familiar rule of their jurisprudence that 'the possessor alone can be held liable to account for rents and revenues;' and therefore that the right of the plaintiff to demand rents and revenues against the bank must be restricted to the time it was in possession. This case is conclusive against the complainant's contention as to the primary liability of the city,e xcept for the actual time when the city was in possession.

The only plausible ground on which the city can be made responsible for the rents, and revenues received by its grantees is that of subrogation, by which the real owner whose title has been judicially established, after pursuing the grantee in possession, and reducing his or her demand against such possessor into judgment, may take the place of such grantee and possessor in suing the grantor, who is under obligation to protect and indemnify such grantee. Can this be done in the present case? The grantees have been sued; judgment has been obtained against them; the city was sufficiently notified of the prosecution to be bound by the result as guarantor; indeed, the city practically conducted the defenses. The complainant, in her bill, alleges, and it is proved, that the defendants in those suits have demanded of the city that it pay or settle the said judgments, and protect them therefrom. The complainant also alleges in her bill that the said defendants are unable to pay the said judgments, except through the aid of the city. Under these circumstances, the grantees, who have lost their property, and who have thus been made liable in judgments for the rents and revenues, might themselves, before satisfying such judgments, have maintained a suit in equity against their guarantor, the city of New Orleans, to protect them from the adjudged liability to pay. An action at law would not lie until actual payment; but equity would regard it the duty of the guarantor to protect the grantee from the extreme hardship of having to pay that which the guarantor himself ought to pay, it being the law of Louisiana that a person evicted from property conveyed to him with warranty may recover from his warrantor, not only the price, but the amount of rents and revenues, which he is bound to respond for to the true owner. As between the city and its grantee, the former, by reason of its guaranty of title, is really the principal debtor, and bound to protect the grantee as a principal is bound to protect his surety. Therefore the grantee is entitled to such remedies as a surety has, and, when fixed by judgment, if not before, may file a bill against his guarantor to protect him. Lord Redesdale says: 'A court of equity will also prevent injury in some cases by interposing before any actual injury has been suffered, by a bill which has been sometimes called a bill quia timet, in analogy to proceedings at the common law, where in some cases a writ may be maintained before any molestation, distress, or impleading. Thus a surety may file a bill to compel the debtor on a bond in which he has joined to pay the debt when due, whether the surety has been actually sued for it or not; and, upon a covenant to save harmless, a bill may be filed to relieve the covenantee under similar circumstances.' Redes. Pl. (4th Ed.) 148; and see Ranelaugh v. Hayes, 1 Vern. 189, 190; Lee v. Rook, Mos. 318; Wooldridge v. Norris, L. R. 6 Eq. 410; Marsh v. Pike, 10 Paige, 595, 597; Taylor v. Heriot, 4 Desaus. Eq. 227; Fell, Guar. 247; De Coly. Guar. (Amer. Ed.) c. 5, p. 308. In Lee v. Rook the master of the rolls said: 'If I borrow money or a mortgage of my estate for another, I may come into equity (as every surety may against his principal) to have my estate disincumbered by him.' Then if the grantees, who have been ousted, and who are condemned in judgment to pay to Mrs. Gaines the rents and revenues due to her, might have maintained a suit in equity against the city to compel it to indemnify them, why may not Mrs. Gaines be subrogated to the grantees' right, and equally maintain a suit against the city? The claim is an equitable one. It is in proof that all the acts of sale of the city contained express agreements of guaranty, with right of subrogation; and an act of sale in Louisiana imports a guaranty whether it is expressed or not.

But if the suit could not be maintained on purely equitable grounds alone, there is a principle o the civil law obtaining in Louisiana, by the aid of which there can be no doubt of its being maintainable. The Code Napoleon had an article (article 1166) expressly declaring that creditors may exercise all the rights and actions of their debtor, with the exception of those that are exclusively attached to the person. It is true that the Louisiana Code has no such article; but it is laid down by writers of authority that this principle prevails in French jurisprudence without the aid of any positive law. 43 Dalloz, p. 239, etc., title 'Vente,' arts. 932-935. The decisions to the contrary seem to be greatly outweighed by other decisions and by sound doctrine. The right thus claimed for the creditor (the word 'creditor' being used in its large sense, as in the civil law) may very properly he pursued in a suit in equity, since it could not be pursued in an action at law in the courts of the United States; and all existing rights in any state of the Union ought to be suable in some form in those courts. We think, therefore, that this part of the decree, amounting to the sum of $576,707.92, with accruing interest, being for the amount of the judgments obtained in the other suits, ought to be allowed, unless subject to reduction for the cause hereafter referred to.

As to the remainder of the decree, amounting to $1,348,959.91, being for rents and revenues, and 'value for use,' as the master calls it, of the unimproved land, we cannot concur in the decision of the circuit court. We think that that sum is made up and arrived at by a method entirely too unsafe and unreliable. It being conceded that the city or its grantees actually derived no rents or revenues at all from the property, the former is charged, instead, with interest, in many cases, for more than 40 years, on a false and inflated valuation, based on the sales of 1837, which were never carried out, and never could be, and, in addition, with interest upon that interest. It seems to us an enormous charge. It cannot be reasonable or sound. The land was a waste, a wilderness, and much of it a swamp. It probably never would have had any material value but for the draining operations instituted and carried on by the city of a portion of it. The sales in 1837 were made at a time of public frenzy. One of the witnesses, who had been a deputy sheriff, being asked if he knew at what price real estate sold in 1837, said: 'I was at the time a notary's office with my uncle, and I remember it was a kind of frenzy. You could hardly buy a lot without being offered triple the price for it. Lawyers made fortunes by it, like Mr. Pepin. Property behind the paper-mill was sold, and when people went there to look at [it] there was three or four feet of water, and they paid a big price for it.' Dr. Labatut, being asked in reference to the Blanc tract, testified as follows: 'I know that Mr. Blanc bought it; I don't know when it was.' Being asked if he could give a description of what condition that property was in in 1837, he said: 'It was simply a forest, had trees on it, and it was not cultivated.' The master, in his report, gives the following abstract, from his point of view, of this class of testimony. He says: 'The evidence on behalf of defendant has been chiefly directed to the establishing of the alleged facts-that the soil so left vacant and unimproved was not fit for use; that it would have been money thrown away, a waste of energy and substance, even to have endeavored to do anything with it; that for years, the end of which has not come, it had been and was destined to remain barren and untouched by the hands of man; and that, therefore, complainant could take nothing on account of her dispossession, even though it had lasted for a period of some forty-five years. To substantiate this view of the case, sixteen witnesses were examined before the master, several of whom being amongst the oldest citizens in this city. Few of those oldest witnesses have any distinct remembrance of knowledge of the exact localit in contest,-the 'Blanc tract,'-but all remember the city when it was nothing but a marsh, first, from Rampart back to Claiborne street, a distance of six squares back from the old square or body of the city, (carr e de la ville,) and then from Claiborne back to Broad street, ten squares from Claiborne, Dorgenois street, one square from Broad towards Claiborne, being the limit of said tract on the river side. And a few also remember that in 1837 all of this 'Blanc tract' was swampy, frequently a hunting ground for three of them, often inundated in heavy rains, and two of them say the land was partly high and partly low. But they all say the city has progressed since then; it is solidly built all along the front of the tract from Rampart to Broad, and that part of the city is well settled. Some of the witnesses had been and are yet the owners of large tracts or parcels of land in and around the city, and had not been able to make anything out of them. Some had tried and had failed to obtain revenues from a few of their squares; others had not tried at all, deeming it beforehand a hopeless task. One of the oldest had purchased a piece of vacant land many years ago, and did not keep it long vacant, over 5 or 6 months, and built of it as soon as he could, so as to derive revenue from it. Witness did not think it produced a revenue whilst vacant, not well remembering, but inferring this from the fact of his building; for, says he, 'when vacant property produces a revenue you don't build on it to make it produce a revenue.' Another witness says that in the aggregate property has produced no revenue whatever since 1868, taking as data for his opinion the decreased assessed value of property. Another witness testified that in his opinion 2 1/2 per cent. or 3 per cent. is all that improved real estate could produce here; that this was also the opinion he had heard expressed years ago by agents of extensive land property; that so it was in his case when abroad some thirty-five years ago, his property being attended to by an agent, but that when the returned home and managed for himself he did a little better. Another witness was agent for several years of a large estate, and is so yet, there being in that estate a piece of ground on the outskirts of the city covering over five hundred acres, with good outbuildings and dwelling-house, which did not bring over $600 per year, though it brought at one time, after the war, $2,400 per annum; but, when asked if it had ever been used or attempted to be used as city property, answers in the negative. His principal had owned a piece of land in this 'Blance tract,' but had never attempted to make it produce a revenue on account of the pending suit in eviction, and he adds that even without the suit in eviction nothing could have been made out it, because vacant property is not wanted by anybody. Another says that the sequares of this tract from Broad along Canal Carondelet are worth nothing at all; but that all of this land, even along the Canal Carondelet, was salable from 1860 to 1870, provided there was nothing of Gaines' claim on them; and that for seven or eight years, no vacant ground, high or low, can, in witness' opinion, be rented in this city. Another says there was no diligence by which the owner of vacant property in the Gaines claim could have made it produce a revenue without improving it. Two of the witnesses state that this property, as all low lands in this city, needed dictching as well as artificial drainage in order that it might be built upon; and one of them, that this tract began to be drained artificially by machinery about the time of its purchase by the city; and the preceding witness, who states that the vacant property in the Gaines claim could not yield a revenue without improvements-would be too expensive, and that he would not make them on any one square for its ownership. The great inflation of the price of real estate in this city in 1837 was also testified to by several of the witnesses, together with the disastrous effect of the panc of that year in depreciating the value of property'

Notwithstanding this evidence, and a great deal more to the same purport, the master reasoned that, because some people improved their land, and obtained good revenues from it, the city of its grantees might have done the same; and that a possessor in bad faith is chargeable with all that can be made out of the property. We think that there are two errors in this reasoning. First, it does not follow that, because small parcels of land in the suburbs of a city may be made profitable by cultivation and improvement, therefore the whole suburbs can be turned to account in the same way. There are hundreds of acres in the vicinity of Washington, for example, lying open and in common. A German gardener may purchase a small lot, and by his indistry make it produce a large revenue; and another might erect a saloon and get a reasonable custom. But it would be impossible to convert the entire suburbs, consisting, perhaps, of more than a thousand acres, into market gardens, and beer saloons, or to build cottages or rows of houses on them to any advantage. The small examples are exceptions. Large outlying tracts have to abide the natural growth and spread of the city. They may lie unproductive in the hands of the most provident men for years.

Another error made by the master and by the court is as to the extent to which the rule is to be carried, that a possessor in bad faith is bound to respond for all that the property possessed can be made to produce. We do not understand that this rule requires a possessor to change the state of the property. Suppose, for example, a large tract of land is wild, mostly forest, and might be made to produce immense yields of grain and produce if it were cleared of timber, and broken up and cultivated. Is the possessor in bad faith-only technically such perhaps-bound to respond to the true owner, on recovery, for the thousands of bushels of wheat and corn and other produce that might have been raised on the land? Is it the duty of a possessor, even a possessor in bad faith, to change the state of the land from wild land to cultivated, farming land, for example, or to open and work mines of iron or copper or gold, so as to make as much out of the land as can be made out of it, and hand it over to the true owner? Does any such principle as this prevail in the law? We think not. The estimation of such undeveloped revenues is altogether too speculative a matter. It is true, the master does not enter into an account of what might have been, but, under the idea that a great deal might have been made out of the land, assumes the arbitrary basis of the crazy prices of 1837, and charges the city with the interest on them, and interest on that interest; and no wonder that the decree is swelled up to nearly $2,000,000. The truth is, that there are degrees of bad faith. There are some possessors who, without any title at all, pertinaciously keep the true and known owner out of possession. They may be properly called knavish possessors. There are others who take a conveyance and go into possession in entire ignorance of any defect in their title, though they are technically possessors in bad faith, because by proper inquiry they might have discovered the defect. Such possessors certainly cannot be placed on the same level with the knavish and fraudulent possessors of whom we have just spoken. In the case of Donaldson v. Hull, 7 Mart. (N. S.) 112, 113, Judge MARTIN, delivering the opinion of the court in a case of mere technical possession in bad faith, said: 'The case appears peculiarly a hard one, as the defendant bought in moral good faith, with the knowledge of the only one of the plaintiffs who was of age, and from the aunts of all of them, who had been selected by their mother to protect their interests after her death, and as the plaintiff who was of age received from him her part of the price. It is to be lamented that the law imposes on courts of justice the obligation of decrei ng the restoration of the value of the services of slaves against a possessor who has fairly paid a full price for them, while it authorizes them to do no more in the case of a dishonest holder, who has taken them in possession without paying anything for them. But, on assessing the value of the services which a defendant is to be decreed to restore, we think the same rule ought not to prevail. In assessing damages for their detention, the good faith or dishonest conduct of a defendant should influence us; and, if justice demands vindictive damages in the latter case, it prescribes a just moderation in the former. The plaintiff must not receive more than he would if he had been in possession.' In the present case, notwithstanding the strong language which has been applied to the city of New Orleans in resisting so perseveringly the claims of Mrs. Gaines, we cannot but express our conviction that those claims have been opposed in entire good faith. When the city purchased the land no one dreamed of any defect in the title. Only one will was known, and by that will Mary Clark, the mother of the testator, was made universal heir and legatee. She had accepted the heirship; her giving a power of attorney to sell the lands of the estate indicated that; and her subsequent conduct all went to the same point. Mrs. Gaines, in her first bill, alleged that Mary Clark had accepted the inheritance and taken possession. Why should any one have doubted of the title? Nevertheless, a majority of this court has held that the vice in the title ought to have been known to the purchaser. We abide by that decision, but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that it was not a moral, but a mere technical, failure of duty on the part of the purchaser not to have discovered a defect in the title. Then the evidence to sustain the claims of Mrs. Gaines was so full of obscurities and improbabilities that a possessor of land purchased from the representatives of Daniel Clark could not be blamed for not giving it credence, and for resisting her suits to the utmost. We have given an outline of the history of her litigation for the purpose of showing how great reason the parties attacked in their possessions had to defend themselves with vigor. A full report of the evidence would have shown it still more strongly. We cannot blame them for making resistance. Although bound by the decisions that have been made by this court in the matter, we cannot say, and no one can say, that there was not much evidence of a very strong character in favor of a contrary conclusion. In our judgment, there was no sufficient evidence that any rents or revenues were derived from the unimproved lands, either by the city of New Orleans or by its grantees; and that part of the decree which is based on such supposed rents and revenues, amounting to $1,348,959.91, must be disallowed, and the bill must be dismissed with regard thereto. As to the residue of the decree, amounting to $576,707.92, founded on the judgments recovered against persons in possession of various portions of the property claiming under sales made by the city of New Orleans, while those persons would have been proper parties to the suit, in order that it might appear that the sums recovered against them had not been released or compromised for less amounts than the face of the judgment, and that they might be bound by the decree, still, as the objection of want of parties was not specifically made, and as it would be a great hardship on all the parties concerned to have to begin this litigation over again, we do not think that the bill should be dismissed on that ground, but that the said sum of $576,707.92 should be allowed to the complainant, with interest thereon, as provided in the decree of the circuit court, subject, however, to the qualification that, if the defendant can show that any of the said judgments have been compromised and settled for any less sums than the face thereof, with interest, the defendant should be entitled to theb enefit of a corresponding reduction in the decree; and a reasonable time should be allowed for the purpose of showing such compromises, if any have been made. The result is that the decree of the circuit court must be reversed, and the cause remanded, with instructions to enter a decree in conformity with this opinion.

The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice LAMAR were not members of the court when this case was argued, and took no part in its decision.

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