Hopkins

Two corporations, lessees of certain real property, demand that the lessors and certain other persons interplead their rights to the landowner’s oil royalties accrued and to accrue under the terms of the lease. A general and also a special demurrer, interposed by some of those against whom interpleader is sought, were sustained without leave to amend, and the question for decision concerns the right of a tenant to maintain such a suit against his landlord and a stranger to the lease.

According to the complaint, in 1936 W. L. Hopkins and Gertrude Ann Hopkins, his wife, leased certain real property to Hancock Oil Company of California and R. R. Bush Oil Company. Landowner’s royalties of approximately $1,500. have accrued. It is also alleged that in 1941, Independent Distributing Co., a copartnership composed of Merritt Bloxom, Eugene E. dwell and Murray M. Olwell, brought an action asserting that W. L. Hopkins, Gertrude Ann Hopkins, and two persons sued by fictitious names, hold the real property described in the lease in trust for them. The relief sought in the suit of Independent Distributing Co. was an accounting of the rents of the land.

The copartnership and the copartners,…

I dissent.

I agree with respondents that the case falls within the common law rule, now embodied in Code of Civil Procedure, section 1962(4) and I do not agree that the provisions of section 386 of the Code of Civil Procedure as amended in 1881 have any such abrogative effect upon section 1962(4) as has just been held by the majority of this court.

I also disagree with the intimation contained in the majority opinion that it can be at all “questionable whether a tenant, by interpleading his landlord and another, directly and absolutely disputes the former’s title.” As will hereinafter be shown this statement is contrary and stands in opposition to all common law and modern authority. The tenant’s very action in filing suit in such a situation, in the absence of any factors showing a derivative title from the lessor to the claimant, subsequent to commencement of the landlord-tenant relationship, is tantamount to an admission that such dispute dated back at least to the commencement of the landlord-tenant relationship.

The principle that a tenant is not permitted to deny the title of his landlord at the time of the commencement of the landlord-tenant relationship stems far back…

Two corporations, lessees of certain real property, demand that the lessors and certain other persons interplead their rights to the landowner's oil royalties accrued and to accrue under the terms of the lease. A general and also a special demurrer, interposed by some of those against whom interpleader is sought, were sustained without leave to amend, and the question for decision concerns the right of a tenant to maintain such a suit against his landlord and a stranger to the lease.

According to the complaint, in 1936 W. L. Hopkins and Gertrude Ann Hopkins, his wife, leased certain real property to Hancock Oil Company of California and R. R. Bush Oil Company. Landowner's royalties of approximately $1,500. have accrued. It is also alleged that in 1941, Independent Distributing Co., a copartnership composed of Merritt Bloxom, Eugene E. Olwell and Murray M. Olwell, brought an action asserting that W. L. Hopkins, Gertrude Ann Hopkins, and two persons sued by fictitious names, hold the real property described in the lease in trust for them. The relief sought in the suit of Independent Distributing Co. was an accounting of the rents of the land.

The copartnership and the…