Daily Development for Thursday, April 20, 2000

By: Patrick A. Randolph, Jr.
Professor of Law
UMKC School of Law
Of Counsel: Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin
Kansas City, Missouri
randolphp@umkc.edu

TITLE; DOCTRINE OF REPOSE: Doctrine of repose bars claim of title to property and operates as absolute bar to claims unasserted for 98 years by heirs of original owner where claimant asserts ownership based upon unrecorded and misplaced deed from original owner.

Hinds v. Kimbrell, 739 So.2d 25 (Ala.Civ.App. 1998).

In 1863, William Pruitt obtained title to the land by patent from the United States government. In 1883, one Maryanne Narramore deed the same property to W.T. Narramore, and simultaneously filed an affidavit that she had purchased the property from William "Pruett" but had lost or misplaced the deed.

The Narramore deed commenced a chain of continuous transactions from 1883 until 1990, when the property was deeded to Hudson, defendant's decedent. It appears that parties in this chain of title paid real estate taxes on the property for more than a century, but, aside from some recorded affidavits asserting that Maryanne Narramore was in continuous possession of the property from 1867 or 1867 until 1883, there is no evidence of continuos actual possession given by the court.

In the meantime, Pruitt died intestate. More than 50 years later, Pruitt's son transferred by deed to Turner, who transfered by deed to Hinds in 1976.

The court commented that the record also suggests that some others might have claims to this property; but since these others were not parties to this action, the court decided only those issues between the Pruett chain claimants and the Narramore chain claimants. It finds that the Pruett claimants are barred from asseerting their claim by the Alabama Rule of Repose, apparently a common law doctrine that bars claimants that have done nothing to evince their claim to the property for twenty years. It appears to stress the payment of taxes, so one assumes that payment of taxes might toll the doctrine.

Note that adverse possession in Alabama takes ten years. So the Rule of Repose does have a different impact after a longer period. The court suggests that it is more like a statutory codification of the concept of laches.

A dissenting judge argued that a prior Alabama case, Oehmig v. Johnson, 638 So.2d 846 (Ala. 1994), established that the Rule of Repose cannot be used to quiet title in a claimant adverse to the true owner, and that therefore it ought not be available to the Narramore claimants here.

Comment 1: Since the Narramore claimants assert that they hold under a valid deed from Pruett, the original owner, the editor does not view their claims as adverse to the true owner's interest. So the editor disagrees with the dissent.

Comment 2: The editor has seen few cases applying the Doctrine of Repose. A quick library check indicates that the concept is not listed in the American Law of Property, Thomson on Real Property, Powell on Real Property or even Patton on Titles (although the editor suspects that DIRTer Joyce Palomar the Patton revisor, will fix that in the next edition.). Thomson, which currently is in a revision by DIRTer David Thomas, won hands down the "most Doctrines in the index" contest, but didn't have this one. Is this uniquely an Alabama concept, at least as applied to title?

Readers are urged to respond, comment, and argue with the daily development or the editor's comments about it.

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