Justia.com Opinion Summary: The State of Illinois maintains a state park on land that was once a college founded in the nineteenth century. The township sought quiet title to two parcels comprising the park. The state has a sign on the land and mows the grass, but no legal instruments have been recorded against the parcels since the original survey and plat in 1860 by the college. When the plat was certified, the parcels complied with requirements for a statutory dedication. The dedication was impliedly accepted by the township and fee simple vested in the public. The appellate court affirmed the circuit court's grant of summary judgment to the township quieting title, finding no lack of jurisdiction. It also affirmed on the merits, declining to reach, as premature, a claim that the township wanted to sell land that must be preserved for public purposes. The supreme court affirmed. In the initial filing by the township, the state could not have been sued in circuit court, but the state went beyond defending itself when it subsequently invoked the jurisdiction of the circuit court to assert its own claim that it was entitled to have title quieted in its favor.
Receive FREE Daily Opinion Summaries by Email Court description: The State of Illinois maintains a state park on land which was once the home of a
school founded in the nineteenth century as Jubilee College.
The State has record title to most of the acreage now comprising the park, based on
sales and conveyances made after the college was dissolved. The two parcels at issue
here, however, cannot be so traced. Although the State has placed a sign there and has
been moving the grass, no legal instruments have been recorded against these parcels
since the land was originally surveyed and platted in 1860 by the trustees of Jubilee
College, to whom all of the much larger tract had originally been donated. When the
plat was certified, these now-contested parcels complied with the legal requirements
then in effect for a statutory dedication. The dedication was impliedly accepted by the
Township of Jubilee, and fee simple vested in the public.
In 2003, the township filed a declaratory judgment action in the circuit court of
Peoria County seeking to quiet title. Named as defendants were the State of Illinois and
other parties. The State moved to dismiss, claiming that it was immune from suit in
circuit court, that it could only be sued in the Court of Claims, and that the circuit court
lacked jurisdiction. This motion was denied.
Subsequently, the State filed a counter-complaint which was structured as a
separate action to quiet title, and much later, in 2009, it moved for summary judgment.
The township responded with its own motion for summary judgment and was
successful. The appellate court affirmed the circuit court’s grant of summary judgment
to the township quieting title, finding no lack of jurisdiction. It also upheld the circuit
court on the merits, declining to reach, as speculative and premature, the State’s
critique that the township wanted to sell land which must be preserved for public
purposes because there had been a statutory dedication. The State appealed to the
supreme court on the jurisdictional issue.
In this decision, the supreme court said that, initially, the State could not have been
sued in circuit court. However, what happened here is that the State went beyond
merely defending itself when it subsequently invoked the jurisdiction of the circuit
court to assert its own claim that it was entitled to have title quieted in its favor.
The results below were affirmed.
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2011 IL 111447
IN THE
SUPREME COURT
OF
THE STATE OF ILLINOIS
(Docket No. 111447)
THE TOWNSHIP OF JUBILEE, Appellee, v. THE STATE OF
ILLINOIS et al. (The State of Illinois, Appellant).
Opinion filed December 15, 2011.
JUSTICE KARMEIER delivered the judgment of the court, with
opinion.
Chief Justice Kilbride and Justices Freeman, Thomas, Garman,
Burke, and Theis concurred in the judgment and opinion.
OPINION
¶1
The issue in this case is whether the circuit court had jurisdiction
to enter summary judgment in favor of the Township of Jubilee and
against the State of Illinois (State) in an action to quiet title. For the
reasons that follow, we hold that it did. We therefore affirm the
judgment of the appellate court (405 Ill. App. 3d 489), which
affirmed the circuit court of Peoria County’s judgment.
¶2
¶3
BACKGROUND
The litigation before us is the result of a dispute over ownership
of two parcels of property located in the Township of Jubilee. For
purposes of this opinion, the two parcels shall be referred to
collectively as the “public square.” So far as we can tell, the property
has never served as an actual public square. The name is derived from
a survey and plat described later in this opinion.
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The “public square” was originally part of a larger land
acquisition made by Philander Chase in 1839.1 Chase bought the
ground in order to establish a college there. The institution, Jubilee
College, was incorporated under the laws of Illinois several years
after it was founded. When Chase died in 1852, he bequeathed the
land to the college’s trustees.
In May of 1860, the Reverend Samuel Chase, Philander Chase’s
cousin and vice president of Jubilee College, certified a plat and
survey labeled the “Plan of Jubilee” and referred to as the “Town Plat
of Jubilee.” Rev. Chase was authorized to do so on behalf of the
college’s trustees, who were the record owners of the property. The
plat and survey, which included the subject property and identified it
as “the public square,” were duly recorded in the recorder of deeds
office of Peoria County. The portion of the plat and survey containing
the “public square” complied with the legal requirements then in
effect for a statutory dedication. The dedication of the “public square”
was impliedly accepted by the Township and fee simple vested in the
public.
The college closed not long after the plat and survey were
recorded. Eventually, in 1926, an action was brought by the State for
dissolution of the Jubilee College corporation. That action was
successful. The corporation was formally dissolved, and the college’s
charter was declared null and void.
Approximately five years following the college’s dissolution, the
chancery court of Peoria County held that as a result of the
dissolution, ownership of the property previously owned by Philander
Chase and bequeathed to the “Trustees of Jubilee College” should
revert to Philander Chase’s heirs. The court appointed three
commissioners to “fairly and impartially” partition the land among
those heirs or, in the alternative, to have it appraised for sale.
Various tracts of the former Jubilee College property were sold at
auction in 1931. An individual named George Zeller was the high
bidder. After obtaining title to the property, Zeller conveyed certain
portions of it to the Boy Scouts of America and other portions to
Saint Paul’s Parish of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Peoria. The
property was, in turn, deeded to the State. From the record before us,
1
Philander Chase was the first Episcopal Bishop of Illinois. He is
perhaps best known as the founder of Kenyon College.
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it appears that neither the 1931 sale nor the subsequent conveyances
included or purported to include the “public square.”
The portion of the former Jubilee College property deeded to the
State became a state historic site. In 1986, the State converted the
property to a state park. Although the “public square” was not
included in the property deeded to the State, the record indicates that
the State erected a sign on a portion of the “public square” describing
it as a “state park or state historic site.” State employees performed
maintenance on that sign for more than two decades and mowed the
lawn on the “public square.” In addition, the State allowed other
individuals to plant and care for a prairie area on the premises.
The “public square” originally covered an area measuring 2.52
acres. A county road now cuts through the land, dividing it into two
smaller parcels. The larger of the two parcels covers 1.6 acres and has
been given the parcel identification number 07-25-302-001. The
smaller parcel, whose parcel identification number is 07-25-303-001,
is approximately 0.127 acres in size.
In 1997, the trustees of the Township of Jubilee approved a
resolution authorizing the Township’s attorney to bring an action to
quiet title to the “public square” and to take such further action as
might be necessary to sell the property. Eventually, in September of
2003, such an action was filed. Styled a “complaint for declaratory
judgment and to quiet title,” the Township’s pleading named as
defendants the State of Illinois, the County of Peoria, the trustees of
Jubilee College, unknown owners and nonrecord claimants.
When no response was filed by or on behalf of the trustees of
Jubilee College, the unknown owners or the nonrecord claimants, the
Township successfully moved for entry of a default judgment as to
those parties. The State then moved to dismiss the Township’s
complaint against it pursuant to section 2-619(a)(1) of the Code of
Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-619(a)(1) (West 2002)). As grounds
for its motion, the State argued that under the State Lawsuit Immunity
Act (Immunity Act) (745 ILCS 5/0.01 et seq. (West 2002)) and the
Court of Claims Act (Claims Act) (705 ILCS 505/1 et seq. (West
2002)) the circuit court had no jurisdiction to consider the
Township’s action for declaratory judgment and to quiet title as it
pertained to the State. In the State’s view, exclusive jurisdiction to
consider the Township’s property claims with respect to the State lay
in the Court of Claims.
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By order dated March 16, 2004, the circuit court denied the
State’s motion to dismiss and granted the State additional time to file
its answer. Instead of submitting an answer, however, the State filed
a document it labeled “counter-complaint,” but later sometimes
referred to simply as a “complaint.” That pleading did not respond to
the allegations of the Township’s complaint. Rather, it was structured
as a separate action to quiet title. It averred that the Township did not
hold title to the land known as the “public square,” that the State was
“the owner in fee simple” of the subject property, that the State
claimed title as “Successor Trustee to Jubilee College as identified by
the Plat of 1860,” and that the Township’s claim should be deemed
a cloud on the State’s title.
Time passed. No further action was taken in the case for more
than three years. Eventually, in January of 2008, the State did answer
the Township’s complaint. Then more time passed. In October of
2009, the State filed a motion for summary judgment. After noting
that both the Township and the State “had filed Complaints for Quiet
Title as to the portion of the area known as the Public Square of the
Town of Jubilee,” the State argued that it “should be granted its
Complaint for Quiet Title” on the following grounds: (1) that the
Township has no legal authority to hold title to property dedicated for
the purpose of creating another town, (2) the Township’s “acceptance
of the dedication appears to be an attempt to claim property it was
never entitled to possess and should be considered a claim by color
of title,” and (3) the Township “is a subagency of the State and cannot
have a superior title to land dedicated to the public.” In the
alternative, the State argued that it had “continuously, adversely
possessed and maintained the property for over twenty years to the
exclusion of the Township and the Township’s action is barred by the
doctrine of laches.”
Shortly after the State moved for summary judgment on its quiet
title action, the Township moved for summary judgment in its favor
on its action for declaratory judgment and to quiet title and for
summary judgment against the State on the State’s quiet title action.
In support of its motion, the Township argued that under the law in
effect in 1860, the plat certified by Rev. Chase and filed with the
recorder of deeds operated as a statutory dedication of the “public
square” property which transferred title in fee simple to the
Township. Though the plat referred to the Town of Jubilee rather than
the Township of Jubilee, the Township argued that at the time the plat
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was created, the terms “town” and “township” were commonly used
interchangeably and that the grantor’s intent was to dedicate the
“public square” to the Township. The Township further asserted that
it had accepted the dedication “by implication from its acts of
assuming control over and exercising jurisdiction over the PUBLIC
SQUARE and held itself out as the owner of such real estate for
approximately 150 years.”
The Township countered the State’s claim of adverse possession
by submitting evidence that in August of 1978, before the State had
erected its sign on the “public square,” a park ranger had appeared
before the Township trustees, on behalf of the State, to ask
permission to put up the sign and that, by a vote of the trustees,
permission had been granted. The Township further noted that within
20 years after granting permission to the State, the Township trustees
had given authority for action to be taken to obtain a quit claim deed
to the property.
In response to the Township’s separate motion for summary
judgment, and in further support of its own motion for summary
judgment, the State disputed the Township’s claim that the property
had been properly dedicated to the Township, it challenged the
competence and significance of the evidence purporting to show that
the Township had granted permission to the State to use the property,
and it reiterated its claim that it had acquired the property through
adverse possession. At no time did the State suggest, directly or
indirectly, that the circuit court lacked jurisdiction to grant the relief
it requested.
The day after the State filed its response, the Township filed a
response of its own. That response asserted various legal and factual
challenges to the State’s contentions. Shortly thereafter, the circuit
court entered an order granting summary judgment in favor of the
Township and against the State and quieting title to the two parcels
comprising the “public square” in the Township, “free of the claims
of all Defendants.”
The State appealed. It asserted that the judgment against it could
not stand because the circuit court lacked jurisdiction over it. The
State further argued, in the alternative, that the circuit court’s
judgment was wrong on the merits and should be reversed. The
appellate court rejected both arguments and affirmed the judgment of
the circuit court. 405 Ill. App. 3d 489. The matter is now before us
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after we allowed the State’s petition for leave to appeal. Ill. S. Ct. R.
315(a) (eff. Feb. 26, 2010).
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ANALYSIS
In our court, the State does not contend that the lower courts’
judgments are incorrect on the merits. Its argument is simply that,
under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the circuit court lacked
jurisdiction to enter summary judgment against it with respect to the
property dispute between it and the Township. In the State’s view,
nothing it did in the course of the trial court proceedings constituted
a waiver of its sovereign immunity and, as a result, the only
permissible forum for litigating the property dispute with the
Township is the Court of Claims.
The doctrine of sovereign immunity “protects the State from
interference in its performance of the functions of government and
preserves its control over State coffers.” (Internal quotation marks
omitted.) State Building Venture v. O’Donnell, 239 Ill. 2d 151, 159
(2010). The Illinois Constitution of 1970 abolished sovereign
immunity “[e]xcept as the General Assembly may provide by law.”
Ill. Const. 1970, art. XIII, § 4. Pursuant to this constitutional
authorization, the General Assembly subsequently reestablished
sovereign immunity by enacting the State Lawsuit Immunity Act,
which provides that “the State of Illinois shall not be named a
defendant or party in any court,” except as provided in the Court of
Claims Act (705 ILCS 505/1 et seq. (West 2008)) and in several other
statutes not pertinent here. 745 ILCS 5/1 (West 2008). The Court of
Claims Act, in turn, established the Court of Claims as the exclusive
forum for litigants to pursue claims against the State. 705 ILCS 505/8
(West 2008).
Whether the circuit and appellate courts ruled correctly in the case
before us turns on the construction of these statutes and presents a
question of law, which we review de novo. State Building Venture v.
O’Donnell, 239 Ill. 2d at 160. De novo review is also appropriate
because the ruling by the circuit court which gave rise to this appeal
involved the grant of summary judgment. Millennium Park Joint
Venture, LLC v. Houlihan, 241 Ill. 2d 281, 309 (2010).
In Sass v. Kramer, 72 Ill. 485 (1978), our court considered the
statutory and constitutional provisions just described in the specific
context of a quiet title action involving the State. Although the quiet
title action in Sass was nominally directed against the Secretary of the
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Department of Transportation, it did not involve a situation where a
State officer had acted illegally or under authority he or she did not
possess. In the court’s view, the litigation “clearly affect[ed] property
of the State” and the real party in interest was the State, not the
individual State official named as the defendant. Id. at 492. Because
the action was, in fact, an action against the State itself, we reasoned
that under the foregoing statutory and constitutional provisions, it
could not be maintained “in any court except as provided in the Court
of Claims Act” and that nothing in the Court of Claims Act permitted
the action to be brought “in any of the courts provided for under
article VI of the Constitution of 1970” (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI). Id.
at 492-93. We therefore reversed the judgment of the circuit court,
which had exercised jurisdiction over the case and entered judgment
quieting title in the plaintiff, extinguished any rights of the State to
the disputed property, and issued a writ of possession in favor of the
plaintiff. Id. at 488, 493.
Sass v. Kramer’s holding that a circuit court lacks jurisdiction to
hear quiet title actions brought against the State has not been
questioned by the parties to this proceeding. We note, moreover, that
where a litigant attempts to initiate an action against the State in
circuit court, efforts by legal counsel for the State to defend itself
against that action will not result in a waiver or forfeiture of the
State’s statutory immunity. That is so because only the legislature
itself can determine where and when claims against the State will be
allowed. People ex rel. Manning v. Nickerson, 184 Ill. 2d 245, 249
(1998). As a result, when the State is named a defendant or party in
a proceeding in contravention of the State Lawsuit Immunity Act (745
ILCS 5/1 (West 2008)), counsel for the State may elect to answer the
complaint, engage in discovery, and undertake whatever other
defensive measures are permitted by the rules and statutes governing
civil practice without jeopardizing the State’s claim of sovereign
immunity. See Watson v. St. Annes Hospital, 68 Ill. App. 3d 1048,
1051 (1979). Such defensive measures are a valid means for
protecting the State’s interests until the issue of sovereign immunity
is finally resolved, and they insure that any other defenses the State
may have are preserved in the event its claim of sovereign immunity
is ultimately rejected.
In light of the foregoing principles, the Township’s request to
quiet title to the disputed realty with respect to any claim of
ownership by the State of Illinois should not have been initiated in the
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circuit court. Proceeding in the circuit court was entirely appropriate
with respect to the County of Peoria and all of the other defendants.
No one disputes that the Court of Claims lacked jurisdiction as to
them. With respect to the claims against the State, however, the Court
of Claims provided the only potential forum under Illinois law.
Had the State merely moved to dismiss the Township’s action,
answered its complaint, or otherwise engaged in the kind of
responsive litigation measures defendants undertake to defeat claims
against them, resolution of this case would be straightforward. Any
judgment entered by the circuit court against the State on the
Township’s claims would be fatally infirm for lack of jurisdiction and
could not stand. As the appellate court in this case correctly
recognized, however, the State did not merely defend against the
Township’s cause of action. See 405 Ill. App. 3d at 495. Rather, it
filed its own complaint to quiet title, alleging that the Township did
not hold title to the land known as the “public square,” that the State
was “the owner in fee simple” of the subject property, that the State
claimed title as “Successor Trustee to Jubilee College as identified by
the Plat of 1860,” and that the Township’s claim should be deemed
a cloud on the State’s title. Such a claim was something the State had
the right to file and the court had jurisdiction to consider.
By its terms, the State Lawsuit Immunity Act (745 ILCS 5/1
(West 2008)) only prevents the State from being named a defendant
or party in court proceedings. It does not limit the authority of the
State to seek redress in the circuit court by filing a complaint of its
own. Indeed, when the State wishes to obtain redress with respect to
a property dispute such as the one before us, the courts are the only
forum available to it. The State cannot press its claim in the Court of
Claims because, except in cases where the State is seeking
recoupment from a claimant under the Court of Claims Act (see 705
ILCS 505/8(e) (West 2008)), a circumstance not relevant here, that
body is authorized by law only to consider claims against the State.
The State argues that the circuit court’s judgment against it cannot
be sustained unless we agree that it waived its sovereign immunity,
a conclusion which, it argues, would be incompatible with the
principle that sovereign immunity may not be waived except by the
legislature. What this argument fails to appreciate is that the reason
the State was subject to the jurisdiction of the circuit court was not
because it waived its immunity. It was because the State elected to
affirmatively invoke the circuit court’s jurisdiction in aid of its claim.
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As we have just indicated, that is something it had every right to do
and was, in fact, required to do if it wished to prosecute its own
action to quiet title. The various decisions cited by the State regarding
waiver of sovereign immunity are therefore of no relevance.
The State further argues that filing its own complaint was
necessary as a defensive measure because, if it had not done so, its
right to assert ownership of the public square would have been
precluded by the doctrine of res judicata. This is incorrect under the
law. Filing the complaint did not serve to guard the State against
future res judicata problems. To the contrary, it was only by filing its
own complaint that the State triggered application of the doctrine.
Had the State simply defended against the cause of action asserted by
the Township, the jurisdictional impediment to the Township’s action
would have rendered any judgment entered by the circuit court void
and unenforceable. A judgment which is null and void for lack of
jurisdiction may not be used as the basis for application of the
doctrine of res judicata. People v. Kidd, 398 Ill. 405, 410 (1947).
We therefore agree with the appellate court that the circuit court
had jurisdiction to consider the State’s claim and determine the
parties’ property rights with respect to the “public square.” That the
State elected to file its request to quiet title in the same proceeding as
the one initiated by the Township rather than by filing a separate
action does not alter that conclusion. While the Township’s complaint
should have been dismissed as to the State earlier in the proceeding,
such a dismissal would not have terminated the litigation. The default
judgment entered by the court shortly before the State filed its motion
to dismiss pertained only to the trustees of Jubilee College and the
unknown owners and nonrecord claimants. It did not affect the claims
with respect to the County of Peoria. At the time the State filed its
own complaint to quiet title to the subject property, the litigation
therefore remained pending.
Had the State filed its quiet title action separately, that action
could have been consolidated with the Township’s still pending
litigation. See 735 ILCS 5/2-1006 (West 2008). Alternatively, the
State could have pressed its claim here by formally moving to
intervene in the Township’s action pursuant to section 2-408 of the
Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-408 (West 2008)). Once
either of those things occurred, the Township could then have
asserted its competing claims to the property against the State without
the need to resort to the Court of Claims. See People ex rel. Manning
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¶ 33
¶ 34
¶ 35
v. Nickerson, 184 Ill. 2d 245, 249-50 (1998). Under either scenario,
the litigation would therefore be left in the same posture it was in
when the circuit court rendered its judgment here. Under either
scenario, there would be no question as to the circuit court’s
jurisdiction to enter that judgment.
Under these circumstances, the only way the State can prevail on
this appeal is if there is something about the particular procedural
mechanism invoked by the State to press its claim here which should
yield a different result. Is it dispositive, in other words, that the State
initially styled its request for relief as a “counter-complaint,” that it
did not formally move for leave to intervene, or that it filed its
complaint under the same docket number as the Township’s cause of
action rather than in a separate proceeding? We think not.
Formality is important in some contexts, but pleadings are to be
liberally construed with a view toward doing substantial justice
between the parties (735 ILCS 5/2-603(c) (West 2008)), and Illinois
courts have not hesitated to characterize pleadings by their content
rather than by their title. Thus, for example, in a case where a
purported counterclaim against a codefendant was not filed until after
the original plaintiff’s underlying claim was settled and the cause of
action dismissed with prejudice, our appellate court held that the
circuit court should have permitted the pleading to be treated as a
complaint against the former codefendant and allowed the claim to
proceed because, had it been filed as a complaint under a separate
docket number to begin with, it would have been proper. In the
court’s view, barring the action because it was wrongly captioned
would not provide substantial justice between the parties. Nelson v.
Biegel, 118 Ill. App. 3d 592, 594 (1983). The same can be said of this
case as well.
In addition, it is axiomatic that in matters of statutory
construction, we cannot allow formality to trump substance where the
result would be contrary to the purposes for which the statute was
enacted and lead to consequences which the legislature could not
have intended. See In re Lieberman, 201 Ill. 2d 300, 319 (2002). The
purpose of the statutory provisions establishing sovereign immunity
is to protect the State from interference with the performance of
governmental functions and to preserve and to protect State funds.
People ex rel. Manning v. Nickerson, 184 Ill. 2d at 248. As described
earlier in this opinion, those concerns are simply not present where,
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as here, the State itself elects to affirmatively invoke the jurisdiction
of the circuit court in aid of its own cause of action.
Finally, we must observe that if the State’s motion for summary
judgment had been successful and judgment had been entered in its
favor on its quiet title action, the State would surely not be
questioning the jurisdictional soundness of the circuit court’s
judgment. We are here today only because the State lost. If we
accepted the State’s jurisdictional argument and reversed the
judgments of the lower courts, the State could return to circuit court
as soon as our mandate issued and file a new quiet title action
identical in every way–save the caption–to the pleading it filed here
in an effort to obtain a better outcome. More than eight years of
litigation would be erased by a procedural technicality whose
observance would serve no purpose other than to give the State a
second bite of the apple. Courts are obliged to construe statutes to
avoid absurd, unreasonable, or unjust results. Roselle Police Pension
Board v. Village of Roselle, 232 Ill. 2d 546, 558-59 (2009). The
outcome advocated by the State would be incompatible with that
obligation.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the appellate court did not
err when it determined that the circuit court had jurisdiction to enter
judgment in favor of the Township and against the State in this
litigation. The appellate court’s judgment, which affirmed the
judgment of the circuit court, is therefore affirmed.
Affirmed.
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