Mullane V. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. - Majority Opinion

Majority Opinion

Justice Jackson began his examination of the issues of the case by discussing the nature of the jurisdiction which the Surrogate's Court was exercising. He explained some of the differences in the service of process required in in rem, quasi in rem, and in personam actions. Mullane had argued that this was essentially an in personam action, and that the Surrogate could not exercise jurisdiction on out-of-state residents upon whom personal service had not been made.

Jackson did not explicitly determine what type of jurisdiction was being exercised here, but held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all of them regardless of how the state classified the action. The beneficiaries' property rights were at stake here, and without proper notice, the "right to be heard" provided by the Fourteenth Amendment was of no practical consequence. Constructive service via newspaper publication, wrote Jackson, was an unreliable method of giving notice, because newspapers have limited circulation and even then, many people do not examine the legal notices, which are usually in small typeface on the back pages. In this case, the legal notice at issue did not even mention the names of the beneficiaries. Furthermore, under normal circumstances, property holders are directly aware of legal proceedings regarding their property, either directly or through a caretaker. But in this case, the caretaker was the beneficiaries' adversary - the trustee itself - which could not be expected to give them reasonable notice, and the special guardian was also not required to give notice.

Jackson held that notice must be "reasonably calculated" to inform known parties affected by the proceedings. Thus, §100-c(12), the section of the statute which dealt with notice to beneficiaries, was unconstitutional. He further held that notice by publication was acceptable for missing or unknown parties, for those whose whereabouts could not be ascertained by due diligence, and for those whose future interests were too conjectural to be known with any certainty. However, Jackson noted that in many cases, notice to the known parties would help the information of the proceedings to reach those who were unknown by the trustee.