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the legislative authority, we are brought to consider whether the lawful power was manifested in such a manner as to cause the act to be repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. And this brings us to the second proposition heretofore stated, viz.:

The adequacy of the safeguards which the statute provides. As no complaint is made concerning the provisions of the statute relating to the designation of and notice to known claimants, we put that subject out of view and address ourselves to the provisions relating to unknown claimants or claims. The action which the statute authorizes may be brought by "Any person who claims an estate of inheritance, or for life in, and who is by himself or his tenant, or other person, holding under him, in the actual and peaceable possession of any real property" situated in a county where "the public records in the office of a county recorder have been lost or destroyed, in whole or in any material part, by flood, fire or earthquake." In the caption of the complaint the statute requires that the defendants shall be described as "all persons claiming any interest in or lien upon the real property herein described, or any part thereof." The summons is required to contain a description of the property affected by the suit and to be directed to "all persons claiming any interest in or lien upon the real property herein described, or any part thereof." The summons is to be published at least once a week for two months, and the defendants are commanded to appear and answer within three months after the first publication of the summons. A copy of the summons is required to be posted in a conspicuous place on each separate parcel of the property described in the complaint within fifteen days after the first publication of the summons. At the time of filing the complaint a notice of the pendency of the action, giving among other things a particular description of the property affected thereby, must be re

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corded in the office of the recorder of the county in which the property is situated, and it is made the duty of the recorder to enter, "upon a map or plat of the parcels of land, to be kept by him for that purpose, on that part of the map or plat representing the parcel or parcels so described a reference to the date of the filing of such notice and, when recorded, to the book and page of the record thereof." In considering the statute we are bound by the construction affixed to it by the Supreme Court of the State, and therefore treat as embraced within its terms that which the highest court of the State has declared the statute exacts, either expressly or by necessary implication. In the Kerrigan case, supra, it was held that the result of the provisions of the statute was "to require the complainant to designate and to serve as known claimants all whom, with reasonable diligence, he could ascertain to be claimants," a construction which, in effect declared that the statute prohibited the omission of a known claim or claimant, upon the conception that the rights of such claim or claimant would be foreclosed by the general designation and notice prescribed for unknown claimants. And in Hoffman v. Superior Court, 151 California, 386, where the doctrine of the Kerrigan case was reiterated and applied, the court, after holding that the statute requires the plaintiff in his affidavit to allege in terms "that he does not know and has never been informed" of any adverse claimants whom he has not specifically named, pointed out that failure of the plaintiff to make inquiry or to avail himself of knowledge which would be imputed to him because of facts sufficient to put him on inquiry as to the existence of adverse claims would be available "in any subsequent attack upon the decree, upon the ground that there was extraneous fraud of the plaintiff in making a false affidavit to obtain jurisdiction." It is to be borne in mind that it has been settled (Griffith v. Connecticut, 218 U. S. 563, and cases cited) that VOL. CCXIX-5

Opinion of the Court.

219 U. S.

the Fourteenth Amendment does not operate to deprive the States of their lawful power, and of the right in the exercise of such power to resort to reasonable methods inherently belonging to the power exerted. On the contrary, the provisions of the due process clause only restrain those arbitrary and unreasonable exertions of power which are not really within lawful state power, since they are so unreasonable and unjust as to impair or destroy fundamental rights.

It is to be observed that the statute not only requires a disclosure by the plaintiff of all known claimants, but moreover at the very outset contains words of limitation that no one not in the actual and peaceable possession of property can maintain the action which it authorizes. No person can therefore be deprived of his property under the statute unless he had not only gone out of possession of such property and allowed another to acquire possession, or if he had a claim to such property or an interest therein, had so entirely failed to disclose that fact as to enable a possessor to truthfully make the affidavit which the statute exacts of a want of all knowledge of the existence of other claimants than as disclosed in his affidavit. Besides, it is to be considered that the statute, as construed by the California court, imposed upon the one in possession seeking the establishment of an alleged title the duty to make diligent inquiry to ascertain the names of all claimants. Instead, therefore, of the statute amounting to the exertion of a purely unreasonable and arbitrary power, its provisions leave no room for that contention. On the contrary, we think the statute manifests the careful purpose of the legislature to provide every reasonable safeguard for the protection of the rights of unknown claimants and to give such notice as under the circumstances would be reasonably likely to bring the fact of the pendency and the purpose of the proceeding to the attention of those interested. To argue that the provi

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sions of the statute are repugnant to the due process clause because a case may be conceived where rights in and to property would be adversely affected without notice being actually conveyed by the proceedings is in effect to deny the power of the State to deal with the subject. The 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. The doctrine on this subject was clearly expressed by the Court of Appeals of New York in In re Empire City Bank, 18 N. Y. 199, 215, where, speaking of the right of a State to prescribe in a suitable case for constructive service, it was said:

"Various prudential regulations are made with respect to these remedies, but it may possibly happen, notwithstanding all these precautions, that a citizen who owes nothing, and has done none of the acts mentioned in the statutes, may be deprived of his estate without any actual knowledge of the process by which it has been taken from him. If we hold, as we must, in order to sustain this legislation, that the constitution does not positively require personal notice in order to constitute a legal proceeding due process of law, it then belongs to the legislature to determine in the particular instance whether the case calls for this kind of exceptional legislation and what manner of constructive notice shall be sufficient to reasonably apprise the party proceeded against of the legal steps which are taken against him."

And in accordance with this view, the Supreme Court of California, in the Kerrigan case, pointed out that the statute furnished all the safeguards for which, in reason, it could have been expected to provide consistently with the condition dealt with. The court said (p. 312):

"Where, as here, the summons describing the nature of the action, the property involved, the name of the plaintiff, and the relief sought, is posted upon the prop

Opinion of the Court.

219 U.S.

erty, and is published in a newspaper for two months, and a 'lis pendens' containing the same particulars is recorded in the recorder's office and entered upon the recorder's map of the property, we cannot doubt that, so far as concerns the possible claimants who are not known to the plaintiff, the notice prescribed by the act is as complete and full as, from the nature of the case, could reasonably be expected."

The case of Ballard v. Hunter, 204 U. S. 241, is instructive on this feature of the case. In that case a judgment of the Circuit Court of Arkansas was affirmed which sustained the validity of a sale of lands for levee taxes. The Arkansas statute authorized the proceedings which had resulted in the sale, upon constructive publication against non-residents and unknown owners. Lands of Josephine Ballard were sold under the statutory proceeding, she not having knowledge of the existence of the suit or of the fact that the taxes had been assessed against her property. In the course of the opinion the court, speaking through Mr. Justice McKenna, said (p. 261):

"It is said, however, that Josephine Ballard was not made a defendant in the suit, though the records of the county showed that she was an owner thereof. But the statute provided against such an omission. It provided that the proceedings and judgment should be in the nature of proceedings in rem, and that it should be immaterial that the ownership of the lands might be incorrectly alleged in the proceedings. We see no want of due process in that requirement, or what was done under it. It is manifest that any criticism of either is answered by the cases we have cited. The proceedings were appropriate to the nature of the case.

"It should be kept in mind that the laws of a State come under the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment only when they infringe fundamental rights. A law must be framed and judged of in consideration of the practical

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