BLINN, RECEIVER OF ALLEN, AN ABSENTEE,
v.
NELSON

U.S. | 1911-10-23
No. 5
222 U.S. 1 Supreme Court of the United States (1911) Positive Treatment
Also reported at: 56 L. Ed. 65 · 32 S. Ct. 1 · SCDB 1911-050 · 1911 U.S. LEXIS 1878
Cited by 26 cases

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Synopsis

A Massachusetts receiver appointed to manage the property of an absentee sought to distribute the funds after fourteen years, but the receiver challenged the state statute authorizing such distribution as violating the Fourteenth Amendment by providing insufficient notice and an unreasonably short timeframe for the absentee to reclaim the property. The Supreme Court affirmed the distribution, holding that a statute of limitations of one year or more for an absentee to recover property from a receiver, after the absentee had been missing for fourteen years and presumed dead, falls within the legislature's constitutional discretion and does not violate due process.

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Opinion of the Court
Mb. Justice Holmes

Mb. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a petition by the next of kin of an absentee for the distribution of her property in .the hands of the receiver; the appointment of the receiver, the taking of the property into his hands, and the present petition all being under Massachusetts Revised Laws, e. 144, and amendments to the same. The general scheme of the law is that in case of a person disappearing from Massachusetts to parts unknown, leaving no known agent in the State, but having an interest in property there, any one who would be entitled to administration may apply to the Probate Court for the appointment of the receiver. After due notice, a warrant to the sheriff to take possession of the property, and his return, a receiver may be appointed of the property scheduled in the sheriff’s return, ‘and the court is to find and record the date of the' disappearance. By .§,10, if the.absentee.does not appear and claim the property within fourteen years after the recorded date, his title is barred; and by § 11 if, after the fourteen years, the property has not been accounted for or paid over, it is to be distributed to those who would have taken it on the day fourteen years after the said date. By § 12 if the receiver is not appointed within thirteen years after'said date, the time for distribution -and for barring actions relative to the property shall be one year after the date of the appointment instead of the fourteen years provided in §§ 11, 12.

On July 20, 1905, the plaintiff in error was" appointed receiver of the property of Mabel E. Allen, and the date of the disappearance of the latter was found and recorded as ‘ within or prior to the year 1892. ’ The present petition was filed on March 18, 1907. The property in question was an interest of the absentee under the residuary clause of the will of Jonathan Merry, allowed and proved on December 8, 1828. Long after the estate was settled an administrator de bonis non was appointed in 1885 and in or about 1899 collected on account of French Spoliation Claims a sum in which Mabel Allen’s share was $1633 and $22. This, with accumulations from interest, is the fund in controversy. The Probate Court made a decree of distribution, which was affirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth. 197 Massachusetts, -279. The receiver, having duly set up that the above mentioned §§ 10, 11 and 12 were contrary to the Fourteeptn Amendment, brought the case to this court.

The plaintiff in error does not deny that the provisions for the appointment of a receiver are valid. Cunnius v. Reading School District, 198 U. S.

458. But he argues that the attempt to bar. the absentee’s title and to ;distribute his property is void for want of sufficient notice and other safeguards and because jfche time within which distribution may be made is arbitrary and unreasonable.' There is reasonably careful provision for notice by publication before the appointment and the whole proceeding begins with a seizure by the sheriff of the property mentioned in the original petition. American Land Co. v. Zeiss, 219 U. S. 47, 67. Tyler v. Judges of the Court of Registration, 175 Massachusetts, 71, 75. So the question pht in the way most favorable for the plaintiff in error is whether a statute of limitations that possibly may allow little more, than one year, is,too short when the property is held in' the quasi adverse hand of the receiver for that time, (what the court would do and how it would interpret the statute if other property feli in after the receiver was appointed is not material in this case).

We cannot doubt as to the answer. If the legislature thinks that a year is long enough to allow a party to recover his property from a third hand, and establishes that time in cases where he has not been heard of for fourteen years and presumably is dead, it acts within its constitutional discretion. Now and then an extraordinary case may turn up, but constitutional law like other mortal contrivances has to take some chances, and in the great majority of instances no doubt justice will be done. See American Land Co. v. Zeiss, 219 U. S. 47, 67. Shorter time than one year has been upheld. Kentucky Union Co. v. Kentucky, 219 U. S. 140, 156. Turner v. New York, 168 U. S.

90. Terry v. Anderson, 95 U. S.

628. See Soper v. Lawrence Brothers Company, 201 U. S. 359, 369.

Decree affirmed.

Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus

Citator

Cited By (11 total)

  • Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306 (U.S. 1950)
    …e criterion is not the possibility of conceivable injury but the just and reasonable character of the requirements, having reference to the subject with which the statute deals.” American Land Co. v. Zeiss, 219 U. S. 47, 67; and see Blinn v. Nelson, 222 U. S. 1, 7. But when notice is a person’s due, process which is a mere gesture is not due process. The means employed must be such as one desirous of actually informing the absentee might reasonably adopt to accomplish it. The reasonableness and hence the…
    1 / 2
  • Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97 (U.S. 1934)
    …liffs at the trial and learn what they had looked at. The risk that they would lie is no greater than the risk that attaches to testimony about anything. “ Constitutional law like other mortal contrivances has to take,some chances.” Blinn v. Nelson, 222 U.S. 1, 7. Here the chance is so remote that it dwindles to the vanishing point, If the bailiffs were to bear false witness as to the place they had shown,‘the lie would be known to the jury. There is no immutable principle of justice that secures protecti…
  • Anderson Nat'l Bank v. Luckett, 321 U.S. 233 (U.S. 1944)
    …so long as to be presumptively abandoned, see Provident Savings Institution v. Malone, supra, 664, just as it may provide for the administration of the property of a missing person. Cunnius v. Reading School District, 198 U. S. 458; Blinn v. Nelson, 222 U. S. 1. With respect to the statutory rebuttable presumption of abandonment of demand deposits after inactivity of ten years and of non-demand deposits after inactivity of twenty-five years, we are unable to say that the legislative determination is witho…

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