5 Md. 471 | Md. | 1853
delivered the following opinion:
In the case of Magruder and Tuck, vs. Carroll, et al., 4 Md. Rep., 335, the question, whether, under the act of 1849,, ch. 229, the will of Michael B. Carroll passed his real estate acquired subsequently to the date of his will, was elaborately argued by counsel for the respective parties as a question legitimately presented by the record. The court likewise so considered it. And having been informed that the circuit court of the United States for the.Maryland district had so construed the statute as to decide that its provisions did not aflect this will, the Court of Appeals examined the subject with great care and deliberation. After much reflection, since the decision then made, I still think this court then gave a proper construction to the statute. Fully impressed with this belief, I, concur with my brethren in the propriety of adhering to our construction, and therefore unite with them in affirming the order passed in this cause by the circuit court for Baltimore city. But I do not deem it necessary to express any opinion as to what should have been the decision of this court, in the former case, if we had given a different construction to the statutes
delivered the opinion of this court.
This appeal is taken from an order of the circuit court for Baltimore city, granted on a bill filed by the appellees against the appellant, and certain other persons represented to be the heirs at law of Michael B. Carroll, deceased, whereby an injunction was directed to be issued against the appellant, to restrain him from making a conveyance of a tract of land, described in the bill, to the said heirs at law.
The bill states in substance, that Michael B. Carroll, lately deceased, in his lifetime, purchased a tract or parcel of land in Prince Georges county, of the appellant, Alexander, as trustee, &c., for the sum of $20,000, or thereabouts; and that the said purchase money had been paid in part by Carroll in his lifetime, and the residue by his administrators, since his death. That on the 10th of September 1837, Carroll made his last will, whereby he devised the residue of his real and personal estate to his wife, Jane M. Carroll. That he died on or about the 30th of August 1851, leaving Mrs. Carroll surviving him; who thereupon entered into possession of said land, claiming the same as devised to her by the will of her deceased husband. That she died in September 1853, leaving a last will by which she devised said land to the complainants, that is, to Sarah M. Worthington for life, with remainder over to said William Worthington in fee. And that they have entered upon said land. They pray that the appellant may be required to convey the same unto them according to their several and respective interests therein, as devisees of Mrs. Carroll. They state further, that the heirs at law of Michael B, Carroll deny the right of the complainants to said land, and claim that the conveyance thereof ought to be made to them; and therefore pray an injunction maybe granted to restrain the said Alexander from conveying said land to the said heirs at law, or to any other person or persons, to the prejudice of the complainants.
On this bill an injunction was granted. The appellant filed his answer, in which he admitted most of the facts in the bill; but states that in a cause properly before this court, and involving the question involved in this cause, it was ad
Although but one of the defendants has appealed from the order granting the injunction, the appeal is properly before us. The 3rd section of the act of 1835, chapter 380, provides, “That where any injunction shall issue from the court of chancery, or any county court as a court of equity, the defendant or defendants in the case, or any of them, may appeal, the answer or answers of such appellants being first filed, from the order of the chancellor granting the injunction, or refusing to dissolve it, to the Court of Appeals of the Shore where such injunction shall have issued, and the said court at the first term to which the case shall be transmitted, shall determine the said appeal, and shall pass such an older in the premises as to it may seem right.” The Court of Appeals in the case of Barnes and Lynch, vs. Dodge, 7 Gill, 109, held that under this section of the act of 1835, a defendant who has answered the bill for an injunction, may appeal from the granting or refusal to dissolve it upon motion, without waiting for the answers of his co-defendants; and in the case of Wagner and Marshall, vs. Cohen, 6 Gill, 97, it was declared, that upon an appeal under the act of 1835, chapter 380, from the granting of an injunction only, this court is
The case involves the construction of the act of 1849, chapter 229, relating to devises, which, it'was supposed had been settle'd by the decision pronounc'ed in Magruder and Tuck, vs. Carroll, 4 Md. Rep., 335. The Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Carroll vs. Carroll, have decided that the decision by the Court of Appeals of Maryland, is not to be treated as a judicial exposition of the act, and has given to the act a construction the reverse of that which was expressed by this court. It now remains for this court to determine, whether the ultimate jurisdiction to settle the construction of the statutes of Maryland, relating to the conveyance of land situate within this State, resides in this court, or in the Supreme Court of the United States} and also, whether the decision in 4 Md. Rep., will be adhered to.
The decision of the Supreme Court affirms two propositions:
1st. That the act of 1849, chapter 229, sec. 1, extends only to wills made after the first day of June 1850.
2nd. That the Supreme Court are at liberty to disregard the decision of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, by which a different construction is given to that act.
Whatever diversity of opinion may be entertained as to the true construction of the first section, all must concede that the letter thereof is susceptible of the construction placed thereon by the Court of Appeals. Punctuated as it stands on the statute book, it reads thus: “Every last will and testament, executed in due form of law, after the first day of June next, shall be construed with reference to the real and personal estate comprised in it, to' speak and take effect as if it had been executed on the day of the death of the testator or testatrix, unless a contrary intention shall appear by the will.”
In the next place from a general view of the act, we must infer that the legislative intent was
1st. To leave the case of a will made by a testator, who
2nd. To subject to the operation of the new rule, a will made by a testator dying after the passage of the act, and before the 1st day of Juno 1850, only when the testator has expressed the intent, that the will shall pass all the estate which he might have at the time of his death.
3rd. To prescribe a new rule which should apply to every case of a will made perfect by the dying of the testator after 1st of June 1850, unless a contrary intent should appear.
Now the intent thus collected from the general considerations of the mischief to be remedied, and the remedy proposed to be applied, can be fully gratified by giving to the first section the construction which has been placed on it by the Court of Appeals, and by embracing within the equity of the second section the limited class of wills made after the passage of the act, by a testator dying before the 1st of June 1850. On the other hand, the construction given to the act by the Supreme Court, excludes that limited class, as well from the letter, as the equity of the section; and all wills made before the 1st of June 1850, except the particular class of cases provided for by the letter of the second section, are left utterly without remedy. The intent of the legislature is, therefore, in a great degree, defeated, and the remedy which was designed to be general, is limited to special cases, which are selected on principles which disregard equally the intent and letter of the statute.
Thus, if the testator devised all his estate which he mav leave at the time of his death, and the will was made before the passage of the act, and the testator died before the 1st of June 1850, his intent will be gratified. But, if the will had been made the day after the passage of the act, and the testator had died the day before, or the day after the 1st of June 1850, or if the will being made before the passage of the act, the testator had died after the 1st of June 1850, in any and every such case his intent, thus plainly expressed, would be disregarded. And what is the course of reasoning by which the Supreme Court have been led to prefer a construction of the act which thwarts the intent of the legislature, and introduces literal and
It said, that upon the construction adopted by the Court of Appeals, the act “would change the legal operation, not only of existing wills, but of those which had already taken effect by the death of the testators.”
Now the Court of Appeals have decided only that the first section of the act governs the case of a will of a testator dying after the 1st day of June 1850, although it may have been made prior to that day. Is it a necessary conclusion, that it must equally embrace the case of a will made by a testator who died a century ago? Is there not, on the contrary, a sensible and clearly defined difference between the two cases? The distinction is stated in the cases reported in 12 Metcalf, 169 & 262, with a perspicuity and cogency of reasoning, which will not suffer by comparison with the decision in 9 Iredell, 288. A will is ambulatory during the testator’s life. It is made perfect and operative by his death. After that event, the title of the devisee becomes vested, and a subsequent statute which would retroacd on that vested right, may be deemed inconsistent with natural equity. But no such objection lies against a statute which affects to change the construction or operation of a will made at the time by a testator then in being, and who has' the capacity of changing his willj and especially where the object of the statute is to gratify the intention by subordinating a rule of law “hitherto inflexible,” to the intent, and where the operation of the statute is postponed, to a day future, within which the testator may accommodate his will to the existing state of the law.
But, in the judgment of the Supreme Court, “the interpretation put by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on the statute of that State, was attended with none of the difficulties which beset the construction of the statute of Maryland, contended for by the counsel for the devisees.” The decisions made by the court of Massachusetts are considered to be “a departure from an important principle,” the vindication of which was attended with “some effort.” The import of this
In Massachusetts, as in Maryland, the English rule prevailed, viz., that a will would not pass title to after acquired lands, and the object of the two statutes was to change this rule. In Massachusetts the object was to be effected by providing “that the lands acquired by a testator, after the making of his will, shall pass thereby, if such shall clearly and manifestly appear by the will to have been his intention.” In Maryland the provision is, “that a last will shall be construed with reference to the real estate comprised in it, to speak as if it had been executed on the day of the death of the testator, unless a contrary
The next objection urged to the construction given to the act by the Court of Appeals is, “that it would make the same will, if offered on the 2nd day of June, operative to pass after acquired land to a devisee, though, if offered in evidence on the next preceding day, it would be inoperative for that purpose.” And it is said that “so to interpret an act concerning
1st. That the legislature was aware that the language of the first section would embrace wills made before the passage of the act.
2nd. That the legislature intended that all antecedently executed wills should remain subject to the provisions of the first section, excepting a particular class, which were conditionally excepted.
3rd. That the,special class enumerated in the second section, (if the testator’s intent was sufficiently manifested,) were to remain subject to,the operation of the first section; and
4th. Were to remain so subject, because they were “last wills and testaments, executed in due form of law,” within the letter of the first member of the first section.
■The Supreme Court admits that the “negative language” of the section “leaves the law open to the suggestion that the provisions of the act would have applied to such wills if the negative word's had not been used.” But then that “negative language” will not stand together with the construction which the court would place on the letter of the first section. What has been written is therefore to be stricken out, and what was not imagined by the legislature is to be substituted. In the place of a section negative and restrictive, we are to write one affirmative and remedial. And what is the pretext for this plain exercise of judicial legislation? It is that upon the letter of the section as it now stands, “the cases excepted can on no just principle be distinguished from those left unexcepted.” But will the section when recast, as it is proposed, embrace all the eases which are within the principle of the case expressly provided for? The section when reformed would provide for the case of a will made before the passage of the act by a testator dying before the 1st of June 1850; but such will would be out of the act if the testator lived to the 2nd
The language of a statute is its most natural expositor, and where the language is susceptible of a sensible interpretation, it is not to be controled by any extraneous considerations. The construction is to be on the entire statute, and where one part is susceptible indifferently of two constructions, and the language of another part is clear and definite, and is consistent with one of the two constructions of which the former part of the statute is susceptible, and is opposed to the other construction, then we are to adopt thabJlonsIS^JWfUych will render all clauses of the statute ha: other construction, which will makeli another. Where the letter of the itself, we may eviscerate an intent existing and the remedy propose what is the mischief to be remedied, are to be collected from the statute itself. that -ry to with chief But remedy, We art; not at liberty to 'imagine an intent, and bind the letter of the act to that intent; much less can we indulge in the license of striking out and inserting, and remodeling, with the view of making the letter express an intent which the statute in its native form does not evidence. Every construction, therefore, is vicious which requires great changes in the letter cf the statute; and of several constructions that is to be preferred, which introduces, the most general and uniform remedy. Judged by these principles, vie can have no doubt of the superiority of the construction given by the Court of Appeals to the act, over that construction which is proposed to be given to it by the Supreme Court.
The second proposition affirmed by the Supreme Court is, that the decision of the Court of Appeals giving a construction to the Maryland act may be disregarded.
In Nesmith vs. Sheldon, 7 Howard, 817, it had been declared to be “the established doctrine of this court, that it will adopt
This declaration was made in a cause involving a question doubtful and important; and a single adjudication of the . court of Michigan was accepted as a settlement of the construction of the statute. In Rowan vs. Runnels, 5 Howard, 134, the court reversed its own opinion expressed in Groves vs. Slaughter, 15 Peters, 451, in deference to an intervening judgment which had been rendered by the Court of Appeals of Mississippi; and this surrender of its own opinion by the Supreme Court is made the more remarkable from the circumstance, that during the term just closed the court has reasserted the principles of the decision in Groves vs. Slaughter, to be well founded in law. Another illustration of the deference with which in past times the decisions of the State courts have been received in the Supreme Court, is given by the case of Green vs. Neal's Lessee, 6 Peters, 291, where the court reversed its own judgment directly upon the point in construction of a statute of Tennessee, and vindicate this reversal as a sacrifice necessary for the maintenance of its principle. But the case which more fully resembles the present is that of the United States vs. Morrison, 4 Peters, 124. The late chief justice of the Supreme Court had pronounced judgment in the circuit court for the district of Virginia, on the construction of a statute of Virginia in conformity with the opinions he had frequently expressed in other causes which had come before him in judgment — in fact in conformity with the settled law of the circuit court. Pending the appeal taken from this judgment a case had arisen in the State courts of Virginia, and had been concluded by a judgment of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, giving to the statute a construction directly opposite to that which had been placed on it by the chief justice. This last judgment was deemed conclusive of the subject, and the chief justice, with the grace and propriety which distinguished him through life, and without one word
The rule thus enunciated by the Supreme Court was founded partly on the consideration of the inconvenience which would flow from the effort on the part of the courts of the United States to enforce a construction of the statute law of a State different from the construction given to the statute law by the State tribunals, and partly on the provisions of the judiciary act of 1789. The destiny of the courts of the Union it was supposed would be fully accomplished, by securing to the citizen of another State, and to the alien, the same administration of the statute law of a State which is accorded to the citizen of the same State.
According to the former cases, the adoption or rejection of a particular decision of a State court does not depend in any manner on the doctrine of estoppel.
It is not necessary that there should be identity of parties or subject matter, and hence it would seem that if the decision is made with a deliberation and solemnity which evidences a purpose on the part of the court to declare the law, such declaration ought to be accepted by the Supreme Court as an adjudication settling the question so decided. It ought to be presumed that the question was properly presented by the record, or if not necessarily involved in the issue, that it was in the exercise of a proper judicial discretion that the court deemed fit to pass upon it. But the Supreme Court, in the case of Carroll vs. Carroll, appear to have unsettled their often enunciated rule. They now declare that they are bound to decide “a question of local law,” as they find “it ought to be decided.” Hence the correctness of the decision of a local court is a proper subject for inquiry. In making the examination preparatory to this finding, the court follow two rules. The first is the maxim of the common law, si are decisis. The second is that rule of deference to the decisions of the local court which we have been so often informed was “the established doctrine” of the Supreme Court. It is now declared that this last rule “has grown up and been held with constant
The canon of judicature which we are informed is hereafter to prevail in the supreme court would seem to have been taken from Ram on Legal Judgments, by whom it was borrowed from Vaughan, 382. In the course of a long and elaborate argument by the chief justice, it is given as the fifth in a series of seven objections taken by him to the authority of a case reported in Moore; the second in the series being, that the case itself bore internal evidence that the opinion, as reported, was no judicial opinion, nor given in any c'ourt. We are not informed of the response made by the other judges to those rules propounded by the chief justice. But it does appear, that in consequence of an equal division of the court, the judgment was rendered for the defendant, in conformity with the case in Moore, the authority of which the chief justice had labored to destroy. Perhaps then we may be allowed to suggest, upon the authority of the chief justice himself, that his entire opinion is no more than a prolatum, concluding in no degree to the judgment rendered in the case in which it was expressed. The seventh canon of the chief justice is, that “if a court give judgment judicially, another court is not bound to give like judgment, unless it think that judgment first given was according to law;” and in vindication of the right of individual and independent judgment, he does not hesitate to impeach the accuracy of Lord Coke and to deny the learning of Littleton. But it deserves remark, that the learned chief justice, although ready to contemn the authority of precedents standing in conflict with his own opinions, conceded as his sixth rule, that “an opinion, though erroneous, concluding to the judgment is a judicial opinion, because delivered under the sanction of the judge’s oath upon deliberation, which assumes it was, when delivered, the opinion of the deliverer.”
But it happens, most unfortunately, that the decision of the
All these circumstances form material parts of the case. In the printed statement of the appellants, prepared for the argument in the Court of Appeals, it is insisted, that the equity set up is equally available against the real estate, whether the same be considered as land descended in the hands of the heirs at law of Carroll, or as property devised by his will to his widow. No question was raised by the appellants in regard to the construction or operation of the will. In the statements filed on behalf of the heirs at law and of the devisees of Mrs. Carroll, the question is fully presented. It was elaborately argued by the counsel for those parties, and submitted by them as a question presented by the record and calling for determination. It will also appear by those statements, that whilst
If tlie court had determined that the real estate had descended to the heirs at law, the two grounds on which they declined a discussion of the general question would have been removed and these two questions would have been directly presented.
2nd. Whether the specific legatee of a chattel of peculiar value, as a household slave, has an equity to restrain the executor, who is also the heir at law, from applying that, chattel to the payments of debts for the purpose of protecting his inheritance, the creditors being passive and content, to take payment out of either fund ?
The first is too well settled in England and this country to justify argument thereon. In Maryland, in Chase vs. Lockerman, 11 Gill & Johns., 185, it was adjudged that the specific legatee and the specific devisee was bound to contribute ratably to the payment of debts; and it, was assumed as a point clear in all the authorities, that laud descended was first applicable in payment of debts in relief of personal estate specifically bequeathed. It will not be necessary to remark on the distinction supposed between the specialty and the simple contract, creditor. It is averred that Carroll died in debt for the land purchased by him after the date of his will, and, independent of this averment, if the equity could have turned on the supposed distinction, the cause would have been remanded, with liberty to the party to amend.
2nd. It is held by Lord Eldon in Clarke vs. Ormonde, Jacob, 108, that it was the duty of executors, as fin-as possible, to preserve articles specifically bequeathed, according to their testator’s wish; and unless compelled, they ought not to apply them to the payment of debts. As a corollary, it results, that at the suit of the specific legatee, equity will restrain the executor from voluntarily applying the chattel bequeathed in payment of debts, in a case where the executors are also heirs, and have assets descended, which are first applicable in payment of debts, otherwise the injury to the specific legatee would be incapable of compensation. Hence the importance of the averments in the bill, that the creditors were not pressing and were not in a condition to press, for a sale of the negroes.
Equity is in general reluctant to interfere with creditors in the enforcement of their legal rights. But under certain circumstances it will interpose, as if on a creditor’s bill a decree
We iiave thus fully examined the decision in 4th Maryland Reports, 335, for the purpose of showing that the point decided by it was directly presented by the record and by the counsel in argument, and that the judgment pronounced was rendered after the fullest consideration, ■ and, also, to vindicate the correctness of that decision, which, in our opinion, has noj been in the slightest degree shaken by anything that has fallen from the Supreme Court.
In conclusion we will observe, that it, is manifest to us that the construction which we have heretofore given to the act of 1849 is correct. It was taken from the statute of 7 William IV., and 1 Victoria, chapter 26. The 24th section of that act is as follows: “And be it further enacted, that every will shall be construed, with reference to the real estate and personal estate comprised in it, to speak and take effect as if it had been executed immediately before the death of the testator, unless a contrary intention shall appear by the will.”
The act was passed on the 3rd: of July 1837. That the Parliament which passed it did not understand it as the Supreme Court'has interpreted it, is clear from the 35th section, which provides, “that this act shall not extend to any will made before the first day of January, one thousand, eight hundred and thirty-eight.” Its framers, it appears from this section, understood it to mean what it said, and therefore the necessity to expressly declare to what class of wills it should apply.
Reaffirming the decision in Magruder and Tuck, vs. Carroll, we necessarily affirm the order of the circuit court in this cause.
Order affirmed.