Don’t Know Much About History . . .
With this post, we inaugurate a new sidebar category: History.
Who knew? It turns out that the Supreme Court case, Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1878) started out as an attorney’s fees dispute. It is remembered as a landmark case about personal jurisdiction, but that’s not how it started.
John H. Mitchell, an attorney, did legal work for Marcus Neff, sued for fees, and obtained a judgment of $300. The judgment was used to attach land owned by Neff in Oregon, worth $15,000, and it was later bought at a sale upon the judgment and transferred to Sylvester Pennoyer. The wrinkles are: (a) Neff was never personally served; and (b) he did not yet have a land grant for the land when he was sued by Mitchell for attorney fees in 1866. Mitchell only began to levy execution later, when presumably Neff did obtain title.
Neff was “served” by publication, because he was out-of-state and could not be found. When he learned about the loss of his land, he brought an action against Pennoyer to recover the property, and won. Pennoyer appealed, and the case went to the US Supreme Court.
The SCOTUS syllabus states the primary holding: “A personal judgment is without any validity if it be rendered by a State court in an action upon a money demand against a nonresident of the State who was served by a publication of summons, but upon whom no personal service of process within the State was made, and who did not appear; and no title to property passes by a sale under an execution issued upon such a judgment.” If the property had been attached at the beginning of the action, then there would have been in rem jurisdiction. But it wasn’t.
Justice Stephen Johnson Field, who had earlier been the fifth Chief Justice of California, authored the opinion. Field is famous. A dissent was written by Justice Ward Hunt, who objected that the distinction between allowing the state to ordain the power to sell property of non-residents at an execution sale if the property is attached at the beginning of a lawsuit, before judgment, but not at the end of a lawsuit, is a “refinement” that cannot be sustained. Hunt feared difficulty quieting title to land would be the result of the court’s ruling.
Hunt is obscure. Wikipedia wryly notes: “His most notable contribution came while riding circuit in New York, where he presided over The United States v. Susan B. Anthony. Citing the 14th Amendment, Susan B. Anthony argued that she was constitutionally guaranteed the right to vote and had not broken the law when she voted in the 1872 election. Justice Hunt refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf, allowed statements given by her at the time of her arrest to be allowed as 'testimony,' explicitly ordered the jury to return a guilty verdict, refused to poll the jury afterwards, and read an opinion he had written before the trial even started. Hunt found that Anthony had indeed broken the law and fined Anthony $100 (which she refused to pay).”
Mitchell became US Senator from Oregon. In 1905, he was indicted, convicted, and sentenced in the Oregon Land Fraud Scandal. He appealed, but before the appeal could be heard, he died of complications from a tooth extraction.
BONUS: Sam Cooke sings "Don't Know Much About History."