115 NY 56 (1889)
Riggs v. Palmer, a “landmark” case and staple of law school instruction for decades, highlights the classic tension between the “letter of the law” and the “spirit of the law,” particularly when interpreting statutes in ways designed to avoid unjust outcomes. The Court’s 1889 holding that Elmer Palmer was barred from murdering his way into an inheritance seems undoubtedly right and just today. It is a bedrock principle of New York law and has been cited many hundreds of times. Judge Earl’s opinion was even extolled as a paradigm of appellate judging by none other than Benjamin Cardozo in The Nature of the Judicial Process. And yet, the Court’s ruling, reversing the judgments of the trial and appellate courts, was the subject of a spirited dissent by Judge Gray and initially considered an outlier by many courts and legal commentators.
In 1880, Francis Palmer, an elderly farmer with a substantial estate executed a will which made relatively small gifts to his two daughters and left the remainder of his estate to his grandson, Elmer Palmer. In 1882, 16-year-old Elmer, afraid that he was about to be disinherited, poisoned and killed his grandfather. He was tried and convicted of murder in the second degree but was freed after serving only four years. The testator’s two daughters brought an action to cancel and nullify the provisions of the will in Elmer’s favor, arguing that he should not be allowed to profit from his own crime. The trial court dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint based on a referee’s report and the General Term of the Supreme Court in the Third Judicial Department affirmed the judgment.
Writing for the majority, Judge Earl conceded from the outset that the governing statutes “if literally construed . . . give this property to the murderer.” But he was not prepared to stop at the letter of the law.
The purpose of those statutes was to enable testators to dispose of their estates to the objects of their bounty at death, and to carry into effect their final wishes legally expressed; and in considering and giving effect to them this purpose must be kept in view. It was the intention of the law-makers that the donees in a will should have the property given to them. But it never could have been their intention that a donee who murdered the testator to make the will operative should have any benefit under it.
Judge Earl wrote: “The writers of laws do not always express their intention perfectly, but either exceed it or fall short of it, so that judges are to collect it from probable or rational conjectures only, and this is called rational interpretation.” Judge Earl reviewed the wisdom of the ancient scholars, including Aristotle, Sir William Blackstone and Francis Bacon, on matters of statutory construction. He quoted Bacon:
By an equitable construction, a case not within the letter of the statute is sometimes holden to be within the meaning, because it is within the mischief for which a remedy is provided. The reason for such construction is that the law-makers could not set down every case in express terms. In order to form a right judgment whether a case be within the equity of a statute, it is a good way to suppose the law-maker present, and that you have asked him this question, did you intend to comprehend this case? Then you must give yourself such answer as you imagine he, being an upright and reasonable man, would have given.
According to Judge Earl:
What could be more unreasonable than to suppose that it was the legislative intention in the general laws passed for the orderly, peaceable and just devolution of property, that they should have operation in favor of one who murdered his ancestor that he might speedily come into the possession of his estate? Such an intention is inconceivable. We need not, therefore, be much troubled by the general language contained in the laws.
Besides, all laws as well as all contracts may be controlled in their operation and effect by general, fundamental maxims of the common law. No one shall be permitted to profit by his own fraud, or to take advantage of his own wrong, or to found any claim upon his own iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime. These maxims are dictated by public policy, have their foundation in universal law administered in all civilized countries, and have nowhere been superseded by statutes.
Beyond the legal commentaries, Judge Earl relied on the recent United States Supreme Court decision in New York Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Armstrong (117 US 591 [1886]), which held that a person who obtained a life insurance policy on the life of another and then murdered that other person could not recover on the policy. Justice Field’s opinion declared that “[i]t would be a reproach to the jurisprudence of the country if one could recover insurance money payable on the death of a party whose life he had feloniously taken.”
Judge Earl underscored the moral consequences of upholding the will in Elmer’s favor:
Here there was no certainty that this murderer would survive the testator, or that the testator would not change his will, and there was no certainty that he would get this property if nature was allowed to take its course. He, therefore, murdered the testator expressly to vest himself with an estate. Under such circumstances, what law, human or divine, will allow him to take the estate and enjoy the fruits of his crime? . . . Just before the murder he was not an heir, and it was not certain that he ever would be. He might have died before his grandfather, or might have been disinherited by him. He made himself an heir by the murder, and he seeks to take property as the fruit of his crime. What has before been said as to him as legatee applies to him with equal force as an heir. He cannot vest himself with title by crime. . . . My view of this case does not inflict upon Elmer any greater or other punishment for his crime than the law specifies. It takes from him no property, but simply holds that he shall not acquire property by his crime, and thus be rewarded for its commission.
Judge Gray’s dissent acknowledged the “extraordinary facts” of a case “without precedent in this state.” As much as he would have liked to “assent to views which commend themselves to the conscience,” he did not believe that the issue before the court “could be affected by considerations of an equitable nature.” In his view, the matter did not “lie within the domain of conscience. We are bound by the rigid rules of law, which have been established by the legislature, and within the limits of which the determination of this question is confined.” The Legislature had “by its enactments, prescribed exactly when and how wills may be made, altered and revoked,” and it “left no room for the exercise of an equitable jurisdiction by courts over such matters.” Pointing to the “strict and systematic statutory rules for the execution, alteration and revocation of the will,” Judge Gray concluded that the “capacity and the power of the individual to dispose of his property after death” involved “matters of which the legislature has assumed the entire control.” In the absence of legislation depriving guilty heirs, “the courts are not empowered to institute . . . a system of remedial justice.”
I cannot find any support for the argument that the respondent’s succession to the property should be avoided because of his criminal act, when the laws are silent. Public policy does not demand it, for the demands of public policy are satisfied by the proper execution of the laws and the punishment of the crime. . . . The appellants’ argument practically amounts to this: That as the legatee has been guilty of a crime, by the commission of which he is placed in a position to sooner receive the benefits of the testamentary provision, his rights to the property should be forfeited and he should be divested of his estate. To allow their argument to prevail would involve the diversion by the court of the testator’s estate into the hands of persons, whom, possibly enough, for all we know, the testator might not have chosen or desired as its recipients. Practically the court is asked to make another will for the testator. The laws do not warrant this judicial action and mere presumption would not be strong enough to sustain it.
Beyond his concern that the Court was effectively creating a new will without authorization, Judge Gray also thought the majority was improperly imposing additional punishment on Elmer for his crime.
What power or warrant have the courts to add to the respondent’s penalties by depriving him of property? The law has punished him for his crime, and we may not say that it was an insufficient punishment. In the trial and punishment of the respondent the law has vindicated itself for the outrage which he committed, and further judicial utterance upon the subject of punishment or deprivation of rights is barred.
Judge Gray’s concluding thoughts on the case are interesting given recent scholarship by Professor Meyer of Colgate University. Professor Meyer suggests that the Riggs decision was driven by the majority’s moral outrage that Elmer Palmer would profit from his crime after serving an over-lenient sentence of only four years for second degree murder. Professor Meyer also points out that before Riggs entered the pantheon of landmark cases it was initially rejected by most American courts due to concerns about judicial overreach and separation of powers.
Sources
William B. Meyer, The Great Murdering-Heir Case: A Biography of Riggs v. Palmer, SUNY Press, 2024.
Veronica Benigno, “Robert Earl,” The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals, Rosenblatt, ed., at 131.