Obrien County IA Archives History - Books .....Chapter XIX Litigation In O'Brien
County 1914
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Book Title: Past And Present Of O'Brien And Osceola Counties, Iowa
CHAPTER XIX.
LITIGATION IN O'BRIEN COUNTY.
The experience of O'Brien county in the amount or aggregate quantity of
litigation, and of the changes that have resulted as the county has grown older
in years, has been much the same as many other rural and farming counties in
Iowa. Its probate work has increased as the years have moved on. All other
litigations have decreased. There are many reasons for this. The county was
first settled by young and middle aged men, mainly by men under forty years of
age. It followed, therefore, that the death rate per thousand people has
increased each year thus far. This necessarily increases the probate work and
all that class of court proceedings relating to wills, executors, trustees,
administrators and guardians, and actions for the partition and sale of real
estate and divisions of property among heirs and children. This large class of
court proceedings very seldom calls for a jury and belongs to that division of
litigation passed upon by the court, upon short hearings in large part. The
rapid advance in price of land from ten to one hundred and fifty and more
dollars per acre, within the short space of thirty years, on the other hand in
settlements of estates and partitions has had the tendency to leave the families
satisfied with court results, and has usually brought about adjustments with but
a nominal number of contests. Indeed so far in the county this advance from year
to year has been so rapid that, no matter what the questions involved, the heirs
as a rule have received more than he or she expected, and satisfactory
adjustment has been the rule rather than the exception. This, however, means
only in the general tendency. Also, while the values have gone up, the rates of
interest have gone down, and as a consequence the amounts in which loans could
be placed on a forty, eighty or quarter section of land have increased in this
thirty years from three dollars per acre until now, if needed, loans can
actually be made from sixty dollars per acre to even seventy-five per acre. In
these partitions of property among the second generation or now third, and
occasionally fourth, generations from the original homesteader, these lands and
loans that can be made enable these children and heirs to buy each other out in
shares and handle matters in that way. The tendencies of all these situations
have been to smooth out frictions and to end what might otherwise be
litigations. The great prosperities of these later years have paid off hundreds
of these mortgages and lessened the number of foreclosures of mortgages. It
seemed a curious fact that the court records show far more foreclosures in the
earlier days, when only five hundred dollars could be borrowed and when the
poorer settler was paying ten per cent, interest, than now when he could, if he
wished, borrow ten thousand at five per cent.
Another prominent item has tended to the later lessening of litigation.
During the period from 1873 to 1885 the numbers of sales of land for taxes were,
as compared to the last ten years, as twenty to one. Tax sales in the , county
are now a rarity. Tax deeds then were as ten to one now. No matter how careful
the tax purchaser, his tax deed was under the ban of a natural prejudice. The
courts were called upon to establish his rights. Those tax title questions have
now been practically all solved out. Those litigations are past, though it took
a goodly number of years and many litigations to do it. Land is now worth too
much to allow it to go to sale, much less to a deed. Even the refuse or back
town lots in the smallest towns are too valuable to lose out in a tax deed.
Another big question in the earlier days which contributed to the extent of
litigation were the contests between the early homesteaders and squatters and
railroads and between each other. This was especially notable in the long years
of litigation over the overlapping lands. This subject has been exhaustively
gone into in the chapter on Homesteads, Free Lands and Squatters, and we need
not here repeat its details. When men are contesting for possession of land, it
arouses far more frictions and determinations to fight than when simply
partitioning out lands of large value, where cash is ready for the heir. When
excited men are contending for the nine points of law or present possession and
actually putting in their crops on top of each other it caused many litigations.
Farming with threatening revolvers or writs of ejection increased the number of
suits.
The period in the early day when every tract practically had to have a loan
on it to carry the land and other debts, called on the technical Eastern loan
company to investigate the title to each tract. Much of the early business was
necessarily done loosely, land being cheap, and owners did not look after the
loopholes. These Eastern loans and the looking into the titles to warrant making
them, kept straightening out those titles, together with the suits necessary to
make the records right. All this kept decreasing the number of questions,
calling for trouble, between neighbors, purchasers or loan companies. That class
of litigation is now largely out of the way.
The collection of the many hundreds of private debts contracted in the early
days increased the litigations and numbers of suits. The payment of most of
those old matters has made the people independent and more contented. Besides
the very fact that people have more to do with, and handle themselves and their
properties, and that they plan in larger figures, make them better satisfied and
contented. Contentment and a happy frame of mind ends much litigation.
THE LARGER AND LESSER LITIGATIONS.
It is a little difficult to draw a line between the leading and the lesser
litigations. It sometimes occurs that some lesser decisions are more important
than the greater.
Perhaps the tne great suit decided in the supreme court of the United States
on October 21, 1895, relating to the twenty-two thousand acres of overlapping
lands claimed by the railroads, and involving one hundred and twenty-five
families, was the most important single litigated matter brought into one court
ever affecting our people. True, however, that that was in the federal courts.
The fact that some six to eight hundred suits in our own court house in Primghar
all hovered around this nucleus of litigation, made it in effect an O'Brien
county litigation. See the chapter on homesteads and free lands for a full
statement.
The second largest litigation ever in the county was the series of suits in
our own courts, during the same period, testing out those large mass of legal
questions of the taxation of those same railroad lands, and when taxation
commenced. These questions were somewhat akin to the land questions themselves.
The county commenced the assessment and levy of taxes on those lands as early as
1873, on the theory that the railroads under the grant by Congress should
commence to pay taxes when they should have earned them, or at least when they
did earn them. The county did this to save whatever rights might later be found
to exist. We make these tax suits a separate series from the lands, as in this
series of suits the county of O'Brien, as a financial institution, was a party
and became interested in the collection of its revenues that it should have had
in years gone by. To further complicate matters, several boards during the years
had entered into sundry contracts with the railroads attempting to fix dates
when taxation commenced. In this series of suits questions were raised that even
the boards of supervisors had no right to make contracts that would lessen the
people's rights to collect its revenues, and that the determining point when
taxation commenced depended on the deeper questions of congressional land grants
and other questions by the courts, and the questions when title commenced, so
that taxation could be had, were all gone into. In the meantime also the county,
by its treasurers, had in some of the years sold some of these lands for these
disputed taxes and sundry tax deeds had been issued on same. But even this
series of tax suits largely lingered around the one great parent suit in the
supreme court of the United States of 1895 referred to, and the attendant
federal litigation. In the main, and as a final result, the homesteader and
squatter paid his back taxes after he secured patent and during the subsequent
years, and those who secured title by virtue of being holders -of the railroad
contracts were held to pay taxes for many years further back, as they stood in
the shoes of the railroads. The payment and collection of these large amounts of
back taxes in such large sums in these later years between 1900 and 1910
replenished the treasuries in the sundry funds and much aided the county in
solving out some of these serious financial straits caused by the old debt. This
suit or series of suits involved approximately one hundred and thirty-five
thousand dollars, which as collected was distributed among the various funds,
state, county, town and school.
AN EARLY BIG LITIGATION AND BREAK.
One of the earliest of the largest litigations, involving many separate
suits, was the failure in 1892 and 1893, of Frank Teabout, of Sanborn, or
rather, perhaps, of Teabout & Valleau. Mr. Teabout, up to that time, had been
one of the largest of the big farmers. His farming operations were generally
referred to as "Teabout's ranches." In fact, he had been a large farmer in
both
Winnesheik and O'Brien counties, handling thousands of acres with great success.
He was a man of brains. His personal movement of body was like the tread of
royalty. By an unfortunate plunge for him, in 1878, in his older age, he had
taken into partnership William H. Valleau, who had even prior to that been a
plunger and had broken up on a large scale in Decorah, Winnesheik county, and a
full-grown and all-around speculator on the board of trade, with no capital.
Stores and grain elevators were soon started in several towns. Mr. Valleau was a
rapid-firing gun. It was but a short time until Mr. Teabout's large
accumulations of a long lifetime were involved in a mesh of complicated
business, including even a twenty-thousand-dollar mortgage executed to Field,
Lindley & Company, a speculating firm on the board of trade in Chicago, and
covering all his farm properties. When the crash came, divers judgments were
rendered against the firm and litigations involving the various features of the
break lasted for years, involving, it was claimed, from one hundred and fifty to
two hundred thousand dollars. Many forms of litigation followed, all resulting
in a series amounting to one of the large litigations of O'Brien county.
A. P. POWERS VS. COUNTY TREASURER.
This suit was on the record of the court for many years, commencing in 1879.
As this suit and its connections was fully gone into in the chapter of the
Taxpayers' Associations and other subjects, we need not repeat. It was brought
by the Taxpayers' Association to enjoin the payment of the county debt of two
hundred and thirty thousand dollars. It was a curious oddity of this suit that
while we must rank it as one of the great litigations of the county it never was
itself tried in the court. It went to the supreme court on a side question; but
was dropped. The injunction was in force two years.
AMHERST H. WILDER.
Amherst H. Wilder was one of the trustees of the Sioux City & St. Paul
Railroad and resided in St. Paul. He was in his individual capacity wealthy and
as such individual and as trustee, and in his estate and that of his wife,
connected with some very extensive records in our courts.
JOHN IRWIN SUITS.
This was one of the very long series of tax title suits brought in the
county involving thousands of acres of land in this as well as Clay county, and
many parts of Nebraska, but ended with practically no actual trials in this
county. John Irwin spent his life in Nebraska City. For some reason, as the
facts developed, it seemed that during his long life his one great hobby was to
fight, not simply tax titles, but taxes, fighting whether or no and to resist
them in every shape. He refused to pay taxes, he refused to redeem them from
taxes when sold, and let them go to tax deeds and then fought the tax deeds.
This hobby became almost a mania. He held the patent or first fee titles.
Notices were served on him for these tax deeds and still he paid no attention.
Later on he died. Then his heirs opened up the question that these eccentric
hobbies of his were not only hobbies, but that they constituted insanity, and
that a tax deed could not be procured against an insane man. These
long-drawn-out sundry litigations being in so many different courts and covering
so many years, though mainly tried in other jurisdictions, met with all sorts of
results. They were on the court records of O'Brien county for more than ten
years. This large number of suits held on our records for so many years were
largely notorious as mere levers or clouds on titles to collect something,
notorious in the negative and practically were never tried.
LITIGATION OVER THE SHELDON BANK.
As stated in the article on Banks and Banking, the liquidation of Ed. C.
Brown's bank, known as the Sheldon State Bank, was the only bank in forty years
that ever broke up and landed its troubles in the courts in this county. In its
details, it involved also a series of litigations and court proceedings. Mr.
Brown was himself indicted for embezzlement, the trial lasting a week, in which,
however, he was acquitted. A receiver was appointed for the bank, in the person
of R. W. Adv. The bank had had everybody's confidence. The whole break-up
covered, or rather included, property questions relating to about one hundred
and eighty thousand dollars, branching out in all its details of banking on both
sides of the ledger. Its deposits included sundry large sums from the county and
school treasuries, and funds from other banks and various trust funds. These
items involved many legal problems as to whether preferences should be given to
certain trust deposits or other peculiarities connected with their deposit in
the bank, and many of the questions were carried clear to the supreme court of
the state. The right to such preferences were not sustained, except as to one
small claim collected by the bank the day it closed its doors, the details of
the suit being too extensive to go into in this article. On the whole,.as a
record bunch of litigations it all ranks as one of the leading litigations of
the county. The bank paid dividends of about seventy-three per cent.
ISRAEL LASH LAND RECORD AND LITIGATION.
This set of court proceedings covered a large acreage in this county, and
was one of the largest in volume and number of pages of record from other state
courts in the United States, ever in the county. It was not, however, large
litigation in the sense of serious questions submitted to the courts, for
decision, but in the patient »and plodding details needed to complete same, and
was all collected and closed in one of the largest, in acreage involved, of the
large partition suits of land in the county. Mr. Lash had died, leaving, an
unusually large and complex set of family connections, scattered everywhere, to
such an extent as to become overwhelming. It was an action for partition and
sale of lands. The heirs and children and brothers and sisters and
grandchildren, in one hundred and twenty-two sets of families or divisions of
people or groups to be dealt with, involving wills, and administrators,
executors, guardians, minors and insane, scattered in a dozen states and in all
manners of courts. To make things doubly sure, in addition to the immense court
records, the parties finally sent a special agent to see all the parties and got
quit claim deeds in each of these large list of families. It was a complete
piece of work, however, and stood the test of scores of title examiners during
the past twenty-five years.
ELIZABETH STREETER.
This bunch of litigations, or rather lack of litigations, was one of the
oddities of court proceedings. In 1897 Elizabeth Streeter leased a half section
of land in Omega township, with a proviso in the lease giving her an option to
buy it at any time during the lease at a given price. Thus it can be seen she
had absolutely nothing invested. She soon skillfully had it circulated
broadcast, both by word of mouth and in the papers, that a very wealthy German
lady was opening up an expensive set of farming operations. As if by magic, it
soon piled up a sort of mountain-high credit. She had the appearance of the most
sublime rustic innocence, that captured bankers, business men and everybody. She
understood, in fact, all branches of business methods. She captured the very
elect. She attended all the stock sales and bought extensively. She signed notes
and papers in plenty. She bought fine teams of horses, and cattle and even down
to ducks and chickens, grain, farm machinery, built buildings, fences, all on an
elaborate scale. Of course the bubble broke. All sorts of suits and attachments
followed. Still she held her nerve. She was arrested, indicted and landed in
jail. She would walk directly away from the sheriff and out and away from the
court, with utter disregard to court proceedings. Her trial was never even
finished. She feigned sickness and escaped entirely, but was soon heard of in
the same business in other places. In the meantime, she walked away from this
county with her accumulations, amounting to thousands. Her apparent innocence
outgeneraled the best business men in several counties.
One of the large litigations in the county in the early days was over the
establishment of the independent school district of Sheldon. The city of
Sheldon, being exactly on the county line between O'Brien and Sioux, it can be
seen that were the town to be confined in its landed territory for taxation
purposes to that reasonable limit, only that the district could extend eastward
in O'Brien county, it could not secure enough funds to build and equip an
adequate school for such a prospective town. Happily the law of Iowa provided
for just such a contingency, as common sense would say it should. The law seemed
perfectly plain. But this did not appear to be plain to the Sioux county
officials or people. They contested the right very energetically through all the
courts, but the town of Sheldon finally won out and has ever since enjoyed
sufficient territory on both sides of the line.
The county has had no feuds, no unconquerable plaintiffs or defendants, or
at least very few, no clannish citizenship, or trouble causing uprisings that
have lasted through the generations. The homestead and squatter litigations were
the longest and most numerous, but even these litigations were normal and
natural and grew out of real questions. The people of the county may be said to
be satisfied with the local administrative justice, its courts and its
litigation. Nineteen-twentieths of its people are engaged in some actual
independent occupation, each individual acting for himself. The county has no
bodies of people dependent on one factory or separate concern. The county never
had a strike or its equivalent, for the reason that it never had any of the
conditions for a strike. All this has kept its litigation healthy and natural.
QUIETING TITLE LITIGATION.
The many early tax deeds, the bogus swamp land deeds, and title clouds by
possession and otherwise, have been the cause of many quieting title suits. For
instance, Herman Greve, who purchased many thousands of acres at the large tax
sale of 1874 and other years, procured tax deeds to about, four thousand two
hundred acres by tax deed in 1879, bringing thirty-five separate suits to quiet
title in one term of court.
The county, as organized and managed by the board of supervisors, has been
very fortunate in not having other than normal litigations, none overwhelmingly
serious. Its criminal trials, in results and in costs, have been natural and
reasonable in amount. It has never had a criminal suit where the costs have
reached the sum of fifteen hundred dollars, exclusive of attorney fees. Its
investigations, for instance, by coroners and justices of the peace, looking in
the direction of murder and manslaughter, scarce reach a half dozen in the forty
years, and the actual trials not that number. The county has never yet had in
its criminal litigation what might be called a "swamper," either in amount of
costs or excessive length of time taken by the court. The claims for damages
against the county thus far have been minor in importance, and it has never had
a judgment rendered against it as yet reaching above a few hundred dollars.
Indeed,, in both damage and criminal suits its expenses have been nominal, as
compared with the fate of some other counties.
The people of the county have had considerable litigation in the federal
courts, over the overlapping lands, as we have recited in that chapter. The fact
that one or other of the parties in suits have been nonresidents of the state
has transferred many cases from the district court at Primghar to the United
States court at Sioux City. This has been especially true in many cases against
the railroads, the roads showing that they were nonresidents, by reason of
having been incorporated in another state, and that the amount involved entitled
it to go there.
REFEREE IN BANKRUPTCY.
The United States court at Sioux City, since 1898, has appointed and
maintained a referee in bankruptcy residing in this county. He hears all
petitions in bankruptcy, and takes all evidence, and passes upon all contested
questions except that of discharge in bankruptcy, which must be done by the
court at Sioux City. It becomes quite a court within itself.
The following persons have been appointed and filled this office of referee
in bankruptcy, and who have presided over that court: J. L. E. Peck, from
August, 1898, to September, 1903; George T. Wellman, from July, 1903, to July,
1911; Spencer A. Phelps, from 1911 to the present time.
During Mr. Peck's period of about five years there were brought and tried
ninety-one bankruptcy proceedings. A corresponding number have been filed and
heard during the period of the other referees.
The records of the referee's court are all finally deposited with and become
a part of the proceedings in the United States district court at Sioux City or
Dubuque. The referee handles these bankruptcies very much as an estate is
handled in a probate court, and makes all orders relating to same. Trustees,
however, are appointed by the referee, who conserve the properties and
distribute the funds under orders by the referee, all matters of which may be
reviewed on appeal to the court itself at Sioux City. Some large properties,
reaching as high as forty thousand dollars and upwards, have been handled. One
plunger of a merchant, or rather perhaps a transient merchant, at Sutherland in
1899 was refused a discharge in bankruptcy until he should pay into the court
the sum of fifteen thousand dollars he was adjudged to be holding back from the
creditors, which item was appealed to the United States court at Sioux City and
the ruling of the referee sustained. Other items of like import and size, and of
various phases on the lines of bankruptcy, have been before the court.
Referring again to general litigation in the county, the jury trials have
run from three to five per term of court, or perhaps a dozen per year,
occasionally fifteen to twenty, or about seven to eight hundred jury trials in
the grand total of forty years.
So far in the history of the county during the forty years, »and up to
January 1, 1914, the suits and numbers of proceedings brought have numbered as
follows: In the old circuit court, abolished in 1886, there were brought one
thousand four hundred and fourteen cases, and transcripts to that court amounted
to thirty-nine. In the district court to January 1, 1914, and which court has
existed for the whole period of the county, there have been seven thousand nine
hundred and sixty suits and proceedings, and one thousand nine hundred and
eighty-six transcripts. In the probate branch of the district court during the
whole period of the county there have been, up to January 1, 1914, one thousand
one hundred and thirty-four estates, guardianships and kindred proceedings. In
grand total of all proceedings there have been twelve thousand five hundred and
thirty-three up to January 1, 1914.
Thus it can be seen that fully three-fourths of all actual material court
work in the county is done by the judges. Of all that large number of suits and
causes of action in the county only about seven to eight hundred have been tried
by a jury. No single case in open court in the county has ever exceeded about
nine days in actual trial. It may be truly said, therefore, that the county has
never been seriously cursed with any Harry K. Thaw, Jarndice vs. Jarndice, or
McNamara trials, as in other places.
ESTATES.
Of the large estates and guardianships the following are among the larger of
the county: Jonathan A. Stocum, William Harker, Elizabeth Harker, John Metcalf,
Henry C. Lane, E. Y. Royce, Thomas Nott, E. M. Brady, James McKeoen and others.
To sum up briefly, the litigation in the county has mainly consisted of
normal law suits naturally arising, with conclusons reached. We have not
attempted details and perhaps, have not recited all or even the most important
litigations. Among all these thousands of proceedings, as can be seen, it would
be difficult to give a brief review in the space allotted in this article; it
would need a book to enter into even a considerable number. We have, however,
given enough to show the general outline of the litigation in O'Brien county.
The justices' courts of the county are much the same as found in other
counties in the state. This, however, is the people's court, with jurisdiction
up to one hundred dollars, and by consent of parties up to three hundred
dollars. It comes in touch in each neighborhood with the citizens in the several
townships. As will be seen from figures above given, there have been in all two
thousand and twenty-five transcripts filed in the district court. A large
number, perhaps a full half, have been transcripts or appeals from the justices'
courts of the county, the remaining transcripts being transcripts of judgments
and proceedings from the courts of record in other counties. The above numbers,
however, would only be a small part of the actual trials and judgments rendered
in those courts, a large majority of whose trials and hearings become final.
Additional Comments:
Extracted from:
PAST AND PRESENT OF
O'Brien and Osceola Counties, Iowa
BY
HON. J. L. E. PECK and HON. O. H. MONTZHEIMER
For O'Brien County
AND
HON. WILLIAM J. MILLER
For Osceola County
VOL. I
ILLUSTRATED
1914
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana
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