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Oklahoma City Municipal Improvement Authority v. HTB12/20/1988
like hostility to the distinction's use for freeing non-sovereign governmental bodies from the effect of statutory limitations.
CONCLUSION
Today's pronouncement doubtless will force many a party to defend against a non-sovereign's personal action brought decades after the claim had accrued. By the rise of governmental tort claim statutes, the public/private right distinction has now been relegated to antiquarian lore. If the court were to follow the standard American version of the nullum tempus rule, the protection enjoyed by municipalities qua holders of public interests in land would not be diminished one iota, yet those public bodies would grow powerless to harass either private citizens or other governmental entities with their ancient claims. A city's lawyer should be held to no lesser degree of vigilance when bringing a personal action in the municipality's behalf than is expected of counsel who champion private causes.
In short, I would hold that:
Because adverse possession of publicly held land can never ripen into title by prescription in favor of the hostile claimant, his period of occupancy will not run against any governmental record owner who holds for the public's benefit; but time to bring a personal action does run against subordinate (non-sovereign) political entities unless the applicable statutory limitation explicitly excludes them from its operation.
To guard against all risk of upsetting settled rights, I would apply my pronouncement to this case, to all litigation now in appellate and certiorari process, and to those actions in the lower tribunals in which judgment will have been rendered after the issuance of mandate in this appeal.
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