SANDERS, Chief Justice.
Gulf Oil Corporation deposited a substantial sum of money in the registry of the Twenty-Fifth Judicial District Court and instituted a concursus proceeding to determine the true owner of property which it was leasing. The district court rendered judgment in favor of the State Mineral Board and the Register of the State Land Office.
Milner Realty Co., Inc., Louis Carmadelle, Jr., and Gustave Carmadelle appealed. The court of Appeal affirmed the judgment of the trial court, decreeing the State of Louisiana the owner of certain water bottoms located in Plaquemines Parish and awarding oil royalty payments to the State Mineral Board. 291 So.2d 807. We granted certiorari to review the judgment of the Court of Appeal. La., 294 So.2d 831.
Milner Realty Co., Inc., Louis Carmadelle, Jr., and Gustave Carmadelle, relators, urge that the Court of Appeal erred in holding that the nullity of a patent of navigable water bottoms was not cured by the lapse of six years, pursuant to Act 62 of 1912 (LSA — R.S. 9:5661), which provides:
"Actions, including those by the State of Louisiana, to annul any patent issued by the state, duly signed by the governor and the register of the state land office, and of record in the state land office, are prescribed by six years, reckoning from the day of the issuance of the patent."
The State advances several grounds for affirming the judgment of the Court of Appeal. It argues that the private claimants are precluded from maintaining that the property was the bed of a navigable water bottom at the time of the Sheriff's sale to the original patentee on October 29, 1910, or on the date of the alleged patent, citing State v. Scott, 185 So.2d 877 (La. App. 1st Cir. 1966). In addition, the State asserts that where a portion of the bed of a navigable body of water is adjudicated to the State for taxes, Article 4, Section 2 of the Louisiana Constitution prohibits a redemption. The State also submits that Act 62 of 1912, the prescriptive statute relied upon by the private claimants, is inapplicable to the patent involved in this proceeding. We are of the opinion that the latter argument is well founded.
It is well settled that prescriptive statutes are stricti juris and will not be extended beyond the letter of the law. Foster v. Breaux, 263 La. 1112, 270 So.2d 526 (1972); Coastal States Gas Producing Co. v. State Mineral Board, 199 So.2d 554 (La.App., 3rd Cir. 1967); Hebert v. Spano, 233 La. 813, 98 So.2d 199 (1957); United Carbon Company v. Mississippi River Fuel Corp., 230 La. 709, 89 So.2d 209 (1956); Hayes v. Levy, 81 So.2d 172 (La.App., 2nd Cir. 1955); Meyer v. Parish of Plaquemines, 11 So.2d 291 (La.App., Orl.Cir. 1942); State v. Stewart Bros. Cotton Co., 193 La. 16, 190 So. 317 (1939).
In United Carbon Company v. Mississippi River Fuel Corp., supra, this Court stated:
"It is equally well settled that prescriptive statutes are strictly construed, and the facts of the case must bring the action clearly within the specific provisions of the law sought to be applied."
By its terms, Act 62 of 1912 designates the patents to which it applies as those duly signed by the Governor, duly signed by the Register of the State Land Office, and recorded in the State Land Office. The State points out that the patent here was signed neither by the Governor nor the Register of the State Land Office. Nor was it recorded in the State Land Office.
Although the original patent was unavailable for examination, the certified copy of the patent offered into evidence indicates that the original was signed by the Governor. The original patentee, over the State's objection, confirmed that the original was signed by the Governor, but that it had been destroyed. For purposes of this decision, this Court accepts the relators' allegation that it was signed by the Governor. The patent, however, still does not qualify as a prescriptible patent within the intendment of Act 62 of 1912. There is no evidence that the patent was signed by the Register of the State Land Office. Although the private claimants assert that the original patent was signed by I. S. Haspel, President of the Board of Commissions for the Grand Prairie Levee District, that signature is insufficient to bring it within the terms of the statute. The statute specifies the signature of the Register of State Lands. Admittedly, the essential signature did not appear on the document.
Moreover, the contested patent is not registered in the State Land Office. The patent was given to the State Land Office only four or five years before the present suit. The record reflects that it was accepted as supplemental information.
We conclude that Act 62 of 1912 is inapplicable to the present patent, because it was not signed by the Register of the State Land Office nor duly recorded in the State Land Office.
It follows, therefore, that the lower courts were correct in holding that the State of Louisiana is the true owner of the property leased by the Gulf Oil Corporation.
For the reasons assigned, the judgment of the Court of Appeal is affirmed.
BARHAM, J., concurs in result and assigns reasons.
SUMMERS, J., concurs for the reasons assigned.
[30] BARHAM, Justice.
The underlying issue in the present litigation is the ownership of the Southwest Quarter (SW 1/4) of Section 26, Township 19 South, Range 18 East in Plaquemines Parish. The land in question is in the Grand Bay area and is submerged beneath navigable waterbodies which connect with the Gulf of Mexico. Gulf Oil Corporation, which holds leases to the property from both the private litigants in this case (Milner Realty Company, Inc., Louis Carmadelle, Jr., and Gustave Carmadelle) and the State, provoked this concursus proceeding to distribute to the true owner or owners the funds from mineral production on the disputed property.
The private litigants claim ownership through one Millard C. Baker, who purportedly acquired title to the property by purchasing it at a sheriff's sale held on October 29, 1910, by the Grand Prairie Levee District, which had acquired it from the State in 1905. A provisional deed was issued to Baker on that date and the State issued a patent to the property to him on March 4, 1911.
The private claimants contend that Act No. 62 of 1912, affording the State and private parties six years to challenge patents conveying state lands, cured any defects in their title and vested in their ancestor in title ownership of the navigable water beds in question. To reach this result, the claimants rely upon a line of decisions by this Court, culminating in California Co. v. Price, 225 La. 706, 74 So.2d 1 (1954) on rehearing by a 4-3 majority, and upon State v. Cenac, 132 So.2d 897 (La.App. 1st Cir. 1961), in which this Court divided 4-3 in denying writs. 241 La. 1055, 132 So.2d 928 (1961).
The district court granted judgment for the State. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed that judgment on the basis that the patent in question was issued in 1911, subsequent to Act 215 of 1908, an "Oyster Statute" prohibiting alienation of navigable water bottoms. The Court of Appeal held that the Price decision therefore did not apply and that the 1912 statute of repose did not have the effect of ratifying the title of the private claimants' ancestor, 291 So.2d 807 (1974). We granted writs. 294 So.2d 831 (La. 1974).
Reserving judgment on the other arguments presented by the State, this Court, on original hearing, affirmed the judgments of the two lower courts on the narrow ground that, because the 1911 patent did not meet the formal requisites to make applicable the 1912 statute of repose, whatever curative powers that enactment might have had did not extend to the patent through which the private litigants claim. We granted a rehearing to reconsider the basis of our original decision and that reconsideration has led us to conclude that we must decide the broader and more basic issue presented by this litigation — that is, whether the jurisprudence of the Price-Cenac line of cases is controlling here and, if so, whether that line of cases and their holdings that private individuals claiming under state patents own the beds of navigable waters if those patents were not attacked under the provisions of Act No. 62 of 1912 are correct.
We have determined that those cases are in point but we have further concluded that they were based upon erroneous reasoning and must be overruled. We do not reach the conclusion without due deliberation, especially in light of the property interests at stake; but our close scrutiny of the reasoning advanced on both sides regarding the legal justification for private ownership of navigable water bottoms has convinced us that repudiation of the Price rationale is the necessary course to take in this matter.
The original source of law from which we must begin our investigation of this problem is found in six articles of our Civil Code. The first three, La.C.C. arts. 449, 450, and 453, remain substantially unchanged since the original adoption of our code in 1808. According to the commentators in the Projet, the other three, La.C.C. arts. 481, 482, and 483, were adopted in our code of 1825 because it was believed proper to classify the nature of ownership of property since "* * * the distinction of things susceptible of ownership, and those which are not * * * serves as a basis for several provisions of the Code." These last three articles expand and explain the first three provisions. The six articles provide:
1 Louisiana Legal Archives, Projet of the Civil Code of 1825 at 41 (1937).
While the first three articles may have had several sources — Domat. The Institutes, the Digest, Las Siete Partidas and article 538 of the Code Napoleon — the last three articles are very definitely derived from Toullier, Le droit civil francais. Tome Troisieme, Liv. II, tit. I, Chap. III, n. 38, 39 at 27 (1839).
"Art. 449. Things are either common or public. Things susceptible of ownership belong to corporations, or they are the property of individuals.
"Art. 450. Things, which are common, are those the ownership of which belongs to nobody in particular, and which all men may freely use, conformably with the use for which nature has intended them; such as air, running water, the sea and its shores.
"Art. 453. Public things are those, the property of which is vested in a whole nation, and the use of which is allowed to all the members of the nation; of this kind are navigable rivers, seaports, roadsteads and harbors, highways and the beds of rivers, as long as the same are covered with water.
"Hence it follows that every man has a right freely to fish in the rivers, ports, roadsteads, and harbors.
"Art. 481. Things, in their relation to those who possess or enjoy them, are divided into two classes; those which are not susceptible of ownership and those which are.
"Art. 482. Among those which are not susceptible of ownership, there are some which can never become the object of it; as things in common, of which all men have the enjoyment and use.
"There are things, on the contrary, which, though naturally susceptible of ownership, may lose this quality in consequence of their being applied to some public purpose, incompatible with private ownership; but which resume this quality as soon as they cease to be applied to that purpose; such as the high roads, streets and public places.
"Art. 483. Things susceptible of ownership, are all those which are held by individuals, and which may be alienated by sale, exchange, donation, prescription or otherwise."
These articles establish, in effect, that certain property designated common or public is held by the State and is neither alienable nor susceptible of private ownership, while other property can be owned by anyone and is not subject to restrictions on its alienability. The redactors of our 1808 and 1825 Codes were aware, when they included these articles in our law, that in France, public things, such as navigable rivers and their beds, are part of the public domain (domanialite public). Such things are governed by a regime entirely different from that governing private law ownership (propriete privee), for property in the public domain is held by the State not in its proprietary capacity, but for the benefit of all the people. 2 A. Yiannopoulos, Civil Law Treatise, Property § 31 at 86 et seq. (1967). [Hereinafter cited as Yiannopoulos.] One of the characteristics of property in the public domain is that it cannot be alienated by the State.
Although the Code neither provides an exclusive listing of inalienable property nor classifies as public navigable waters other than rivers, the jurisprudence has recognized that, by analogy to navigable rivers, navigable water bottoms other than rivers are public things insusceptible of private ownership. Yiannopoulos § 32, at 90 et seq.; Milne v. Girodeau, 12 La. 324 (1838); Louisiana Navigation Co. v. Oyster Commission, 125 La. 740, 51 So. 706 (1910); State v. Bayou Johnson Oyster Co., 130 La. 604, 615, 58 So. 405, 409 (1912); State v. Richardson, 140 La. 329, 72 So. 984 (1916); Roussel v. Grant, 14 Orl.App. 57 (1917); State ex rel. Board of Commissioners of Atchafalaya Basin Levee Dist. v. Capdeville, 146 La. 94, 83 So. 421 (1919); State ex rel. Saint v. Timothy, 166 La. 738, 117 So. 812, 813 (1928); Comment, Alluvion and Dereliction in Lakes, 7 Tul.L.Rev. 438 (1933); Comment, Ownership of Beds of Navigable Waters, 30 Tul.L.Rev. 115 (1955).
The logic of the analogy is apparent. The public interest protected by designating navigable rivers as public things is the free use of navigable waters for transportation and other commercial purposes. If that interest justifies vesting the ownership of the beds of navigable rivers in the State, as it has in Louisiana, the same rule should apply to other navigable water bottoms. Yiannopoulos § 32 at 90 et seq.
Moreover, when the water bottom in question lies, as in this case, under the sea or an arm of the sea, it is explicitly included among the inalienable things vested in the State.
In Miami Corporation v. State, 186 La. 784, 812, 173 So. 315, 324 (1937), this Court noted that private ownership of the beds of navigable waters is forbidden by and "* * * contrary to the whole spirit of the Code * * *." We then held that "* * * [i]t is the rule of property and of title in this State, and also a rule of public policy that the State, as a sovereignty, holds title to the beds of navigable bodies of water." 173 So. at 322.
Further evidence of the strong public policy against private ownership of navigable water bodies embodied in the Civil Code articles is found in a series of legislative enactments, recognizing explicitly or implicitly that such property is owned by the State as inalienable public things. The first enactment of this type was Act No. 247 of 1855, which recognized that if any of the lands acquired through Acts of Congress of 1849 and 1850 contained navigable waters, the land under these waters would not be subject to sale along with swamp and overflow land that were to be sold. Next, Act No. 124 of 1862 recognized that the bottoms of navigable lakes were insusceptible of private ownership by providing that once natural causes rendered dry the beds of navigable lakes, they became "swamp lands" and were susceptible of alienation. One authority has noted that these two statutes reveal that the legislature in 1855 and 1862 was keenly aware of the prior existence of the public policy of the State that the beds of navigable waterbodies are inalienable and insusceptible of private ownership. J. Madden Federal and State Lands in Louisiana 331 (1973) [hereinafter cited as Madden].
Moreover, in formulating Act No. 75 of 1880, the legislature did not enunciate as specific a recognition of public policy as it had in the two previous statutes, but it did exercise extreme caution in providing that the lands it authorized to be sold were only those received by the State under the Swamp Land Acts of 1849 and 1850. This specific restriction evinces an intent to make certain that inalienable water beds were excluded, in recognition of the public policy emanating from the Civil Code. See Madden, at 331. Additionally, Act. No. 24 of 1862 assimilated dried up navigable lakes to swamplands and removed the prohibition against alienating such lands.
In 1886, the first of the Oyster Statutes was passed by the legislature (See Act No. 106 of 1886, Act No. 110 of 1892, Act No. 124 of 1896, Act No. 153 of 1902, Act No. 52 of 1904, Act No. 189 of 1910, Act No. 54 of 1914, Act No. 139 of 1924 and Act No. 67 of 1932). Each of these enactments provided that the beds of certain navigable waterways near the Gulf of Mexico shall be, continue and remain the property of the State of Louisiana. Likewise, Act No 258 of 1910 affirmed that the right to ownership of the beds of all navigable streams is vested in the State.
Thus, legislative action through the course of a century repeatedly acknowledged and reaffirmed the Code and jurisprudential rule of property and public policy that the beds of navigable waters are owned by the State in its sovereign capacity and that these beds could not be alienated by the State. Assuming for the moment that the legislature could have overridden its own prior legislation and the jurisprudence construing that legislation by an explicit conveyance of a navigable waterbottom to a private individual, the statute books are devoid of any such alienation and of any authorization to a state official to alienate such property. On the contrary, each successive act reveals a constant reiteration of extant policy whenever the opportunity presented itself. Finally, the people of the State elevated the long-standing rule of public policy to the dignity of a constitutional provision in adopting Art. IV, § 2 of the 1921 Constitution, which removes from the legislature any power it may have had to "* * * alienate, or authorize the alienation of, the fee of the bed of any navigable stream, lake or other body of water, except for purposes of reclamation. * * *" This is restated in the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 in Art. IX, § 3.
Nonetheless, during the period between the enactment of the Civil Code of 1808 and the adoption of the 1921 Constitution, state officials conveyed large blocks of land to private citizens by means of patents. For instance, many private claimants received under State patent tracts of swampland previously ceded to the State by the federal government under the Swampland Acts. The private claimants in this case trace their title to the land in question to a state patent issued to their predecessor in title under authority of Act No. 24 of 1898 and Act No. 27 of 1904, conveying certain lands from the State to the Grand Prairie Levee District and empowering the District to dispose of such land as it should deem proper. Within the geographical boundaries recited in many of these patents lie navigable bodies of water; the issue to be resolved is whether the patents or any subsequent acts of the legislature did convey, or indeed, could have conveyed any navigable water bottoms to private individuals.
It is generally conceded that, by virtue of the legislation and jurisprudence previously discussed and the public policy that they evidence, the state officials empowered to issue patents had no authority to convey the beds of any navigable waters. The private litigants in this case so concede and the majority decision on rehearing in the Price case, which we overrule today, clearly recognized this fact:
"* * * Hence, as stated in the Miami decision, the bottoms or beds of navigable waters are public things within the contemplation of our Civil Code and it is contrary to the policy expressed therein to permit private interests to own them. * * *" 74 So.2d at 11.
However, this Court in Price and in Humble Oil Refining Co. v. State Mineral Board, 223 La. 47, 64 So.2d 839 (1953) upon which it relied, and the First Circuit Court of Appeal in State v. Cenac, 132 So.2d 897 (1961), concluded that the private landowners in those cases had acquired title to the beds of navigable waters by virtue of Act No. 62 of 1912. The majority on rehearing in Price said:
For a discussion of the improper reliance made by the Court in Price upon other inapposite decisions, see the learned and comprehensive dissent in that case by Justice Hawthorne, 74 So.2d 17, 24-27.
"Hence, it follows that, inasmuch as the Legislature had the right to authorize the issuance of a patent to the submerged lands, it was likewise empowered to subsequently ratify the action of the Governor and Register of the State Land Office in granting such a patent. And this, we found in our original opinion, is exactly what the Legislature did by the enactment of Act No. 62 of 1912." (Emphasis added). 74 So.2d at 11.
Thus, the dispositive issue before the Court in this case, as in Price, is the effect of Act No. 62 of 1912 and that issue resolves itself primarily into a question of statutory interpretation. In pertinent part, Act No. 62 reads as follows:
"* * * [A]ll suits or proceedings of the State of Louisiana, private corporations, partnerships or persons to vacate and annul any patent issued by the State of Louisiana, duly signed by the Governor of the State and the Register of the State Land Office, and of record in the State Land Office, or any transfer of property by any sub-division of the State, shall be brought only within six years of the issuance of patent, provided, that suits to annul patents previously issued shall be brought within six years from the passage of this Act."
For the many reasons set forth below, we conclude that this provision was not intended to ratify the absolutely null conveyances of navigable water bottoms to private individuals and should not be applied as it was in Price; rather we conclude that the legislature intended to do no more by its enactment than cure formal defects in patents that were essentially valid, in that they conveyed alienable property. California Co. v. Price, 225 La. 706, 74 So.2d 1, 17 (1954) (Hawthorne, J., dissenting); Carter v. Moore, 258 La. 921, 933, 248 So.2d 813, 817 (1971) (Barham, J., concurring).
In 21 Tul.L.Rev. 454 at p. 473 it is said:
"* * * It is doubtful that Act 62 of 1912 was intended to deprive the State of ownership of important commercial waterways or navigable bodies of water. The proper function of a limitation statute is to bar adverse claimants from enforcing rights against property upon the basis of defects in the title which, save for the statute of limitations, might render the title absolutely void. The statute of limitations is not intended to create a right of possession [ownership] when there is a total absence of authority for the inception of title; thus, the statute would not confirm title under a patent issued by an administrative official acting without legislative sanction or authority * * *."
This Court, in its opinion on rehearing in All-State Credit Plan Natchitoches, Inc. v. Ratliff, 279 So.2d 660 (La. 1973), recognized that the capacity of prescription to divest ownership of property is strictly limited. In that case we stated:
"* * * Under our Civil Code, ownership can never be lost by the failure to exercise it — only by the acquisition of ownership by another through possession sufficient to acquire it through an acquisitive prescription. La.Civ. Code Art. 496. * * *" 279 So.2d at 666.
Act No. 62 of 1912, by its very nature a remedial or curative statute providing for liberative prescription, could not have vested ownership in private parties by the mere inaction of the true owner, the State. The State could deliver no title to this land. The patentee had acquired nothing which could be liberated from the State under a statute of liberative prescription or peremption.
Every rule of statutory construction bearing on the situation with which we are presented demands the result we reach. We do not mean to imply that rules of construction are ends in themselves or that they are always to be followed. But, Act 62, standing alone, is subject to varying interpretations and the applicable rules of construction are particularly helpful here to determine legislative intent.
Because Act No. 62 of 1912 is a statute of prescription or peremption, it must be presumed to have been adopted by a legislature aware that the provision would be strictly construed. "* * * [P]rescription is stricti juris and the statutes on the subject cannot be extended from one action to another, nor to analogous cases beyond the strict letter of the law." State v. Stewart Bros. Cotton Co., 193 La. 16, 19, 190 So. 317, 320 (1939). See also Hayes v. Levy, 81 So.2d 172 (La.App. 2d Cir. 1955); Coastal States Gas Producing Company v. State Mineral Board, 199 So.2d 554 (La.App. 3rd Cir. 1967). As this writer noted in his concurring opinion in Carter v. Moore:
"* * * More than this, because of the constitutional protection afforded the State from being adversely affected by prescription except upon express constitutional or statutory authority, prescription could never be pleaded against the State under implied authority." 248 So.2d at 823.
Thus, the very nature of Act No. 62 of 1912 mandates a narrow reading of its provisions, which provisions in no way imply that absolutely null transfers of inalienable public land should be acquired by private landowners by the mere failure of the State to bring suit within the relatively short peremptive period afforded by the statute. A much more reasonable interpretation of the legislative intent is to attribute to the statute the power to cure only patents that were inherently sound and lacking only in some formal requisite for their validity.
A more basic reason for our refusal to construe Act No. 62 as a ratification of conveyances of navigable water bottoms is that statutes should be interpreted in light of the State's public policy. When an enactment is ambiguous and susceptible of more than one interpretation, one of which is clearly inimical to a long established line of legislation and jurisprudence, common sense as well as legal doctrine mandate that the interpretation least offensive to the public policy be adopted.
Ambiguous statutory provisions should be interpreted in pari materiae with strong public policy. It is the general public policy which illumines the motive and purpose of the legislature in its action. Our Court used this method of statutory interpretation in Miami Corp. v. State, 186 La. 784, 173 So. 315 (1937).
Some of the scholarly criticism directed at the Price decision was aimed at the failure of the majority in that case to employ this basic rule of statutory interpretation:
"* * * It is a mild understatement to say that the Humble and California cases focused on an issue of statutory interpretation about which there was great doubt and serious uncertainty. Of the six different opinions written in the California case, three are dissents. In the light of these facts, it cannot be denied that either one solution or the other could be sustained by reasonably adequate legal argument — especially since the so-called intent of the 1912 legislature is necessarily an imputed intent formulated by people here and now about what may or may not have been in the minds of other people more than forty years ago. Under such circumstances the decision of the case should have been in conformity with the public policy of the state, that is, to sustain the inalienability by the state of the beds of navigable waters because they are insusceptible of private ownership." Dainow, Property, 15 La.L.Rev. 273.
"* * * The question presented in these cases [California and Duck Lake] was whether the 1912 act should be interpreted to exclude from its terms any patents which might embrace the beds or bottoms of navigable bays and lakes. Despite the previous landmark decision of Miami Corporation v. State and the policy reflected in the Civil Code sustaining the legal doctrine that beds of navigable waters are insusceptible of private ownership, these cases rejected the view that the 1912 act excluded patents that embraced the beds of navigable waters.
"Because these decisions run counter to the policy expressed in the Civil Code and in the Constitution of 1921, and because it may be cogently argued that the interpretation given to Act 62 of 1912 does violence to the legislative intent, it is easily understandable that the farreaching effect of these decisions would evoke legislative action during the 1954 sessions. * * *" Hebert and Lazarus, Legislation Affecting the Civil Code, 15 La.L.Rev. 9, 22 (emphasis supplied).
"The ill-starred Price decision rests, indeed, on a `weak jurisprudential foundation,' is contrary to the whole spirit of Louisiana legislation, and does violence to fundamental precepts of Louisiana property law by allowing public things to be privately owned." Yiannopoulos, Validity of Patents Conveying Navigable waterbottoms — Act 62 of 1912, Price, Carter, and All That. 32 La. L.Rev. 1, 18 (1971).
The concurring opinion in Carter v. Moore is apposite:
"While citing numerous statutes which expressed the public policy of inalienability of the bottoms of navigable waters (omitting only the two earliest ones, Act No. 247 of 1855 and Act No. 124 of 1862), the majority of Price glided over this consistency of legislative intent. A contrary intent and policy were inferred from the broad, general language in a single statute which permits prescription or peremption to bar certain state claims. It is an extremely strained and stretched interpretation of this statute to hold it ran counter to all prior legal authority which had prohibited the alienation of the beds of navigable waters, and to hold that such a broad, general statement by the Legislature had the effect of validating patents which, being in contravention of law and public policy, were absolute nullities when they were issued." 248 So.2d 813, 824.
Moreover, it is well settled that repeals by implication are not favored and will not be indulged if there is any other reasonable construction. State v. Standard Oil Co. of Louisiana, 188 La. 978, 178 So. 601 (1937); Wenk v. Anisman, 211 La. 641, 30 So.2d 567 (1947); State v. Randall, 219 La. 578, 53 So.2d 689 (1951). "If the Legislature by the enactment of Act No. 62 of 1912 had intended to repudiate the articles of the Code and make such a serious change in the existing public policy of the State, it would have expressed that intention. * * *" California Co. v. Price, 225 La. 706, 74 So.2d 1, 22 (Hawthorne, J., dissenting). To allow an entrenched maxim of legal principle to be uprooted by so oblique a legislative pronouncement would pervert the judicial duty to seek and enforce the legislative will.
Our conviction that the legislature did not intend to deviate from its established policy is further intensified by the fact that just two years before Act No. 62 was passed, and again two years after that act, and in 1924 and 1932, the legislature reasserted its unswerving adherence to the proposition that navigable water bottoms are the property of the State and cannot be alienated. Stronger evidence of the error in the construction of the act advocated here by the private litigants can hardly be imagined.
Buttressing our method of interpreting this statute is the United States Supreme Court's construction of the federal statute after which ours was patterned.
As pointed out by Professor Yiannopoulos:
"* * * Act 62 of 1912 was patterned after an 1891 federal statute of repose which reads as follows: `Suits by the United States to vacate and annul any patent shall be brought within six years after the date of the issuance of such patents.' 43 U.S.C. § 1166. A six year prescriptive period is most unusual in Louisiana and cannot be traced to any other source. Cases applying the federal statute declare that the statute cannot be used to validate a patent of lands not subject to disposition under other federal laws. Thus, federal cases interpreting the source provision are directly contrary to the Price decision." Yiannopoulos, § 32.5, n. 140.8 at 19 (1975 Supp.).
Supporting professor Yiannopoulos' observation is a considerable line of cases providing that "* * * [t]he [federal] act was one of a series of acts, and manifestly applies only to the public lands of the United States subject to acquisition under the laws enacted for the disposition of the public domain." (Emphasis supplied.) Northern Pacific Railway Company v. United States, 227 U.S. 355, 367, 33 S.Ct. 368, 373, 57 L.Ed. 544, 550 (1913). See also United States v. Winona St. Peter Railroad Company, 165 U.S. 463, 17 S.Ct. 368, 41 L.Ed. 789 (1897).
In La Roque v. United States, 239 U.S. 62, 36 S.Ct. 22, 60 L.Ed. 147 (1915), it was stated that 43 U.S.C. § 1166 "* * * is part of the public land laws and refers to patents issued for public lands of the United States. This trust patent was not issued for public lands of the United States, but for reserved Indian lands to which the public land laws had no application. * * *" See also United States v. Minnesota, 270 U.S. 181, 46 S.Ct. 298, 70 L.Ed. 539 (1926). (Emphasis supplied.)
In United States v. Chandler-Dunbar, 209 U.S. 447, 28 S.Ct. 579, 52 L.Ed. 881 (1908), Mr. Justice Holmes begins his disposition of the issue of the applicability of the 1891 statute limiting suits by the United States to vacate and annul patents by stating, "* * * [t]his land, whether reserved or not, was public land of the United States, and in kind open to sale and conveyance through the Land Department." (Emphasis supplied.) He cites United States v. Winona, supra, which stated, regarding the act of 1891, that:
Mr. Justice Holmes, after describing the land under consideration as "public land" and "in kind open to sale and conveyance by the Land Department," stated that since the United States had power to issue the patent and to validate it, it was of no moment that the President had not been authorized to give the patent. He correctly notes that void instruments are the kind of instruments which the statute purports to make valid. If the United States had authority to divest itself of title to the land in question, then any act or omission which would have subjected the patent to being declared void and annulled was cured by the lapse of time provided in the statute of limitations. The prerequisite to the effectiveness of the statute of limitations in the federal act is a patent issued on lands which the United States had power to dispose of under Acts of Congress or the Constitution. A judicial act purporting to alienate that which was inalienable was, because of the very fact of the inalienability, incapable of being validated because it was more than merely invalid. It was in effect an act transferring nothing and creating nothing.
"* * * [U]nder the benign influence of this statute it would matter not what the mistake or error of the land department was, what the frauds and misrepresentations of the patentee were, the patent would become conclusive as a transfer of the title, providing only that the land was public land of the United States and open to sale and conveyance through the land department." (Emphasis supplied.) United States v. Winona, 165 U.S. at 476, 17 S.Ct. at 371, 41 L.Ed. at 795.
What all of these cases say is that if the United States had the power to make or validate the sale of the land the patent issued could not be attacked after a period of limitation even for fraud or ill practices. The question as to whether patents could be attacked was simply whether the patents were issued on lands covered by the public land acts of Congress. Thus, lands which were inalienable because they were not "public lands" within the contemplation of the congressional acts could not be acquired by a mere statute of limitations for there was no title to transfer in the beginning. For example, the lands held by the government for the Indians were incapable of alienation by the government, for they were held in trust for the Indians. See La Roque v. United States, supra, and United States v. Minnesota, supra.
Aligning this construction of the source act of our own statute of repose with our statute, it is readily apparent that the navigable water bottoms we consider were lands held by the State for the people and were not subject to alienation. There was no original authority in the State to transfer title and therefore there could be no ratification of any attempt to create title in another.
Another factor influencing our conception of the intended purpose of Act No. 62 is one which perhaps could, in itself, be dispositive of the issue before us had we chosen to rely solely upon it. The right of ownership of navigable water bottoms was vested in the State of Louisiana upon its admission into the Union in 1812 on an equal footing with the original thirteen states. See Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U.S. 1, 14 S.Ct. 548, 38 L.Ed. 331 (1894); Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 5 L.Ed. 681 (1823); Illinois Central Ry. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387, 13 S.Ct. 110, 36 L.Ed. 1018 (1892); Weber v. Board of State Harbor Commissioners, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 57, 21 L.Ed. 798 (1873); Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. (3 How.) 212, 11 L.Ed. 565 (1845). The United States Supreme Court held in Martin v. Waddell, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 367, 10 L.Ed. 997 (1842) that after the Revolution, the people of each state themselves became sovereign, and in that character hold title to all navigable waters and their beds for their own common use, subject only to the supremacy of the federal government. This proposition has been restated in the recent case of Bonelli Cattle Company v. Arizona, 414 U.S. 313, 94 S.Ct. 517, 38 L.Ed.2d 526 (1973). Because of the equal footing doctrine, states subsequently admitted to the Union likewise acquired the beds of navigable waters, but only in the capacity of trustee for the interest of the people of the state.
It was held in Illinois Central Ry. Co. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387, 13 S.Ct. 110, 118, 36 L.Ed. 1018 (1892), that the states cannot abdicate their trust over property in which the people as a whole are interested so as to leave it entirely under the use and control of private parties. In that case, the United States Supreme Court even held that a legislative grant of the State's title to submerged lands under Lake Michigan could be repealed by subsequent legislation because the lands in question were held in trust for the public use. See dissenting opinion of Hawthorne, J., from denial of writs in State v. Cenac, 132 So.2d at 933.
In Federal and State Lands in Louisiana, Madden says the following about the application of the public trust concept in Louisiana:
"It appears only realistically factual and legally sound to adopt and state the view that the public policy of the state treating navigable water beds as inalienable and insusceptible of private ownership actually arose when Louisiana attained statehood, for the public trust was then created, resulting in the vesture of a fixed and indestructible public right, only changeable by the consent and positive action of the people of the state in their collective sovereignty. Under that premise, doubt has been expressed as to the legal effectiveness of legislation to surrender the vested rights of the people themselves, the more plausible and stronger view being that the abdication of such vested public rights could only be lawfully accomplished by constitutional means and procedure." (Emphasis supplied.) Madden at 335.
This theory casts grave doubt upon whether the legislature could have alienated the beds of navigable waters under the 1912 repose statute or, for that matter, under any legislative pronouncement; for this reason, we stated above that the notion of public trust could be dispositive of this case.
It is now clearly manifested by the La. Constitution of 1921, Art. IV, § 2, and the La. Constitution of 1974, Art. IX, § 3, that the State can never divest itself of its navigable water bottoms except through authority of the people themselves. We hold, for pre-constitutional purposes that because the beds of navigable waters of Louisiana are held in "public domain" for the people of the State, that at the very least (if at all possible) "* * * [a]ny alienation or grant of the title to navigable waters by the legislature must be express and specific and is never implied or presumed from general language in a grant or statute. * * *" California Co. v. Price, 74 So.2d at 21 (Hawthorne, J., dissenting). Thus, we find another compelling reason for confining the effect of Act 62 to ratification of transfers by patent only insofar as the transfer is of property susceptible of alienation.
Finally, we pass to the last major factor influencing our interpretation of the 1912 repose statute. In 1954, responding to the majority's invitation in the Price decision handed down earlier the same year, the Louisiana legislature enacted Act 727 of 1954, now incorporated in the Louisiana Revised Statutes as La.R.S. 9:1107-1109. That law provides:
" § 1107. Public policy respecting ownership of navigable waters and beds thereof
"It has been the public policy of the State of Louisiana at all times since its admission into the Union that all navigable waters and the beds of same within its boundaries are common or public things and insusceptible of private ownership; that no act of the Legislature of Louisiana has been enacted in contravention of said policy, and that the intent of the Legislature of this state at the time of the enactment of Act No. 62 of the year 1912, now appearing as R.S. 9:5661, and continuously thereafter was and is at this present time to ratify and confirm only those patents which conveyed or purported to convey public lands susceptible of private ownership of the nature and character, the alienation or transfer of which was authorized by law but not patents or transfers which purported to convey or transfer navigable waters and the beds of same.
" § 1108. Invalidity of patent or transfer purporting to include navigable waters and beds thereof
"Any patent or transfer heretofore or hereafter issued or made is null and void, so far as same purports to include such navigable waters and the beds thereof, as having been issued or made in contravention of the public policy of this state and without any prior authorization by law; provided that the provisions of this Section shall not affect the laws of accretion or apply to lands that were susceptible to private ownership on the date of the patent or transfer by the state or a state agency.
" § 1109. Statutes not to be construed as validating purported transfer of navigable waters or beds thereof
"No statute enacted by the legislature of Louisiana shall be construed as to validate by reason of prescription or peremption any patent or transfer issued by the state of any levee district thereof, so far as the same purports to include navigable or tide waters or the beds of same."
Although the issue has never been passed upon by this Court, it has been suggested by some that Act No. 727 of 1954 is unconstitutional because it is a legislative usurpation of judicial power to interpret legislation and amounts to retroactive legislation impairing property rights. See concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Summers in the denial of writs in State v. Cenac, 241 La. 1055, 132 So.2d 928 (1961); see also, Comment, Ownership of Beds of Navigable Waters, 30 Tul.L.Rev. 115, 125 (1955). Because Act No. 727 is not necessary to our decision in this case, we need not decide that issue squarely. We point out, however, that genuine interpretive legislation is a recognized function of legislatures in systems of codified laws, being considered a correlative of the power to legislate. The legislature, after all, seems to be an appropriate agency to clarify the meaning of its own statements. 1 M. Planiol, Treatise on the Civil Law, §§ 208-11 at 155-56 (La.St.L.Inst. transl. 1959); Yiannopoulos § 32.5. Moreover, the United States supreme Court recognized the authority of Congress to enact interpretive legislation in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, 395 U.S. 367, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969). Thus, interpretive legislation is not inherently violative of the principle of separation of powers.
We find these observations especially applicable to Act 727. The repose statute of 1912 was ambiguous; in the Price case, the majority of this Court expressly told the legislature that if it had found the Court's interpretation of the 1912 statute incorrect in the cases preceding Price, it could have corrected that interpretation. The lawmakers reacted by adopting the only legislation which could respond effectively to the judicial suggestion. If ever the Legislature were entitled to have an interpretive act upheld as not being an invasion of the judicial function or an abrogation of the theory of separation of powers, certainly the legislature which passed Act 727 as a response to the Court's solicitation was so entitled.
Moreover, interpretive legislation cannot properly be said to divest vested rights, because, under civilian theory, such legislation does not violate the principle of non-retroactivity of laws. The interpretive legislation does not create new rules, but merely establishes the meaning that the interpreted statute had from the time of its enactment. It is the original statute, not the interpretive one, that establishes rights and duties. 1 M. Planiol, Treatise on the civil Law, § 251 at 179 (La.St.L.Inst. transl. 1959); Yiannopoulos § 32.5 at 18 (1975 Supp.).
Without holding that the 1954 act is a truly interpretive statute, we do no more than cite its provisions as additional evidence, entitled to great weight in light of the context within which it was passed, that the legislative intent in passing the 1912 statute was not to divest itself of inalienable navigable water bottoms. We would reach the same result whether the Act had been passed or not, but we feel that the legislature's own response to the clearly erroneous Price decision fortifies our holding.
It should be noted that under the public trust doctrine as enunciated in Illinois Central Ry. Co. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387, 13 S.Ct. 110, 118, 36 L.Ed. 1018 (1892), Act 727 of 1954 would be valid whether classified as interpretive legislation or not, since in that case the United States Supreme Court allowed the legislature to repeal a grant of public lands to private individuals because it violated the public trust.
Moreover, the passage of Act 727 of 1954 within eleven days after the finality of the Price decision performed another function. The people of this state have been on notice since that time that the rule of property in this state is not the one announced in Price or in the Humble case; rather, it is that rule pronounced, and never varied from, by the legislature forbidding private acquisitions of navigable water bottoms. Article 1 of the La.Civil Code states: "Law is a solemn expression of legislative will." Enactments of the legislature are presumed to be constitutional and valid until declared otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction. Thus, protest should not be heard from those who say the overruling of Price will work a hardship upon those who relied on its pronouncements.
The so-called rule of property has little or no validity in this civilian jurisdiction. That concept stems from the theory of stare decisis, is founded entirely upon common law, and finds no basis in our Civil Code, or in our statutory law. Stability in the law and constancy of jurisprudence are undoubtedly objects to be constantly sought. However, when it is necessary to overrule a short line of clearly erroneous jurisprudence in order to reinstate the long-standing law and public policy of this State, that course is clearly the one that must be followed.
In Miami Corporation v. State, 173 So. at 320, it was stated:
"* * * In Louisiana, this court has never hesitated to overrule a line of decisions where they establish a rule of property when greater harm would result from perpetuating the error rather than from correcting."
The following is also applicable:
"The civilian does not regard the judicial interpretation of a statute as becoming part of the statute, so that the statute as interpreted is the law. He regards the statute alone as being the law, and prior decisions do not insulate him . . . from going directly to the statute for its meaning. In ideal theory, the civilian judge decides cases primarily not by reference to other decisions, but by reference to legislative texts and within the limits of such judicial discretion as the legislative texts grant." Tate, Techniques of Judicial Interpretation in Louisiana, 22 La.L.Rev. 727, at 744 (1962).
In conclusion, we hold that patents conveying state property to private individuals are ineffective insofar as they purport to alienate the beds of navigable waters, and that Act No. 62 of 1912 did not have the effect of ratifying such absolutely null transfers. Thus, the State is the owner of the entire property involved in this case. We expressly overrule the holdings in California v. Price, State v. Cenac, and all other cases where a contrary view is expressed.
Louisiana Civil Code arts. 501, 502, 503 and 3453 are concerned with the ownership of the fruits when there is a true owner and another who claims to be the owner. A distinction is made favoring the good faith possessor who is described as one "* * * who possesses as owner by virtue of an act sufficient in terms to transfer property, the defects of which he was ignorant of. * * *" La.C.C. art. 503. A bona fide possessor ceases to occupy that position when the defects in his title are made known to him or when a suit is instituted to claim restitution. La.C.C. arts. 503 and 3453. There is some controversy as to whether mineral royalties are to be treated as fruits entitling a good faith possessor to retain them against the true owner. See Martel v. Hunt, 195 La. 701, 197 So. 402 (1940); Comment, The Measure of Damages for Unauthorized Production of Oil and Gas: The Role of Good and Bad Faith, 15 Tul.L.Rev. 291 (1941); Mason v. United States, 260 U.S. 545, 43 S.Ct. 200, 67 L.Ed. 396 (1923); Yiannopoulos, § 137, particularly notes 233 and 239, at 412 et seq.
Under the particular facts and extreme circumstances in the case we review, we are not too concerned with making an express classification of mineral royalties, especially in view of the recent enactment of the new Mineral Code and the absence of brief or argument on that point of law in this case. Because of the extreme state of flux in the law relating to ownership of navigable water bottoms, plaintiff in this concursus proceeding was required to acquire leases from both the defendants in order to be certain of protecting its interests. Defendants were and are caught on the horns of a dilemma which is finally resolved by this Court. Without resolving the question of whether such revenues as mineral royalties are technically "fruits" or not, we feel constrained, without making an exception to a rule or stating any general rule of law, to accord the rights of a bona fide possessor to the private litigants in this matter. As suggested by Mr. Justice Tate in his concurrence on rehearing in Carter v. Moore, 248 So.2d at 829, "* * * [w]e would thus be according such possessors the benefits equivalent to those usually accorded possessors in good faith. * * *" we believe that such a solution is "just, legal and proper" in the case under the vagaries of the law and particular circumstances and facts of the case. La.C.C.P. art. 2164.
This concursus proceeding was instituted on February 21, 1964 and we will treat the commencement of that proceeding as the notice which terminates bona fide and good faith possession under La.Civil Code arts. 503 and 3453. Royalties accumulated and deposited on the day of this concursus proceeding will be distributed to the private litigants and royalties accruing thereafter will be accounted for and paid to the State.
This concursus proceeding purports to put before the Court solely the issue of title to the proceeds from the royalty earnings deposited by the plaintiff in the registry of the Court. Since we find the right to the proceeds originally deposited belong to the "private" defendants, and the right to the proceeds thereafter belongs to the other defendant, the State, we necessarily pass upon the issue of ownership of the property from which the royalty is derived under the mineral leases. We find it necessary and proper to cast the judgment on both the issue of the right to the funds on deposit and the right to claim the ownership of the immovable which produced the royalty. The concursus proceeding has impleaded those who claim conflicting interests to assert those interests contradictorily in this proceeding. La.C.C.P. arts. 4651, 4654. After the full litigation between the two adverse claimants as to the ownership of that immovable, the record permits us to pass with finality upon the issue of title and we have determined that the State owns — has dominion over — this immovable property against all private persons.
For the reasons assigned, it is therefore ordered, adjudged and decreed:
(1) That the State of Louisiana is declared to be the owner and entitled to possession of the Southwest Quarter (SW 1/4) of Section 26, Township 19 South, Range 18 East in Plaquemines Parish;
(2) That the plaintiff, Gulf Oil Corporation, shall pay unto the State of Louisiana all royalties attributable to the one-eighth lessor's royalty interest in production of oil and gas from all future and existing wells drilled and completed as producers on that property from February 21, 1964;
(3) That there be judgment in favor of the defendants, Milner Realty Co., Inc., Louis Carmadelle, Jr. and Gustave Carmadelle, and they are declared owners of the funds originally deposited in the court, less and except the costs of these proceedings:
(4) That if the funds deposited are not sufficient to cover the costs of these proceedings any other costs shall be taxed one-half against the defendants, Milner Realty Co., Inc., Louis Carmadelle, Jr. and Gustave Carmadelle, and one-half against the State Mineral Board and the Register of the State Land Office to the extent that such costs are provided by law.
Accordingly, the judgments of the court of appeal and trial court are affirmed as modified.
* * *
SUMMERS, J., dissents for the reasons assigned.
MARCUS, J., dissents for reasons assigned by SUMMERS, J.
DIXON, J., dissents.