Guy Gambrell, Jr.; Fadilah Gambrell v. United States of America

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 23-2869
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Guy Gambrell, Jr.; Fadilah Gambrell
Plaintiffs - Appellants
v.
United States of America
Defendant - Appellee
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Western District of Missouri - Joplin
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Submitted: June 13, 2024
Filed: August 2, 2024
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Before COLLOTON, Chief Judge, MELLOY and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.
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MELLOY, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiffs Guy Gambrell, Jr., and Fadilah Gambrell brought claims against the
United States pursuant to the Quiet Title Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2409a(a) (the Act). The

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district court1 determined the action was barred by the Act’s 12-year statute of
limitations. Id. § 2409a(g). We affirm.
I.
A. The United States Army Corps of Engineers’ 1950s Land Acquisitions and
Subsequent Nearby Land Development
In 1956, the United States, through the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps),
purchased land from J.O. and Ada I. Melton pursuant to a general warranty deed.
Using traditional surveying descriptions including township, range, and county, the
land the United States purchased was bounded on its western edge, in relevant part,
by the centerline of the “Fractional SW ¼ of Fractional Section 35” (the “true
centerline”). In 1962, the Meltons subdivided adjacent land that they had retained
(land directly to the west of the Corps’ 1956 purchase). The plat map for the
subdivision indicated the presence of stone at a corner location (referred to
throughout this case as the “Peter’s Stone”). Neither the legal description for the
Corps’ purchase nor the legal description for the subdivision, however, referenced a
“stone.” The Peter’s Stone on the plat map suggested the stone marked the
centerline. Accordingly, looking only at the 1962 plat map, the Peter’s Stone
appeared to mark the location of a north-south line defining the boundary between
land sold to the Corps in 1956 and land retained by Meltons. By the mid-1970s, a
family named Highfill owned Lot 8 of the subdivision.
In 1957, the Corps purchased land from J.E. Paine and Hattie Ethel Paine with
a border that relied on the same legal description and true centerline. By the mid-
1970s, a family named Boler owned land adjacent to and west of the land the Corps
purchased from the Paines in 1957.
1 The Honorable Brian C. Wimes, United States District Judge for the Western
District of Missouri.

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In 1974, the Corps conducted a survey which revealed the Peter’s Stone
referenced on the subdivision plat map was not located at the true centerline. Rather,
the Peter’s Stone was roughly 66 to 80 feet east of the true centerline. The Corps
placed a surveying monument at the accurately measured centerline. Based on the
Corps’ survey, a dispute arose concerning a strip of land between the monument and
the Peter’s Stone with undisputed boundaries on the north and south ends. If the
Peter’s Stone were treated as the relevant centerline defining the western boundary
of the Corps’ land, then the Corps’ land did not extend as far west as the Corps
asserted. If the accurate survey and monument controlled, the Corps’ land extended
farther west than suggested by the 1962 subdivision plat map. Pursuant to the 1962
subdivision plat map, all of Lot 7 and substantial portions of Lots 8–11 of the
subdivision lie in whole or in part on the disputed land.
B. 1970s Litigation
In 1977, relying in part on the 1974 survey, the United States brought quiet
title actions in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri
against the Highfills (the owners of Lot 8 of the 1962 subdivision) and against the
Bolers. The court consolidated the actions. The owners of Lots 7 and 9–11 of the
subdivision were not parties to the action even though, according to the 1962 plat
map, Lots 7–11 were all affected by the location of the centerline. The parties agreed
that the Corps’ monument reflected the accurate surveying centerline. They also
agreed that the Peter’s Stone had been present long before 1956. The parties
disputed what the Meltons had intended to transfer to the Corps in 1956 and what
the Paines had intended to transfer to the Corps in 1957.
In 1979, in an unappealed written opinion, the court reviewed the history of
transactions involving the disputed land going back several decades and leading up
to the time of the dispute. The Highfills, the Bolers, and the United States submitted
evidence and testimony regarding surveys, surveying practices, and the likely
understandings of prior transferors and transferees regarding the legal effect of the
Peter’s Stone. The court also heard testimony describing purported discussions after

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1956 between United States employees and affected landowners. The district court
discussed the law of deed reformation and found, based on the specific evidence
presented in the case, that the Meltons and the Corps in 1956, and the Paines and the
Corps in 1957, likely operated on the mutually mistaken belief that the Peter’s Stone
marked the true centerline of the SW ¼ of Fractional Section 35.
As a remedy, however, the court in 1979 did not award to the Highfills the
entirety of Lot 8 as it would have existed if the Peter’s Stone were treated as the true
centerline. And as to the Bolers, the district court ordered no specific remedy at all.
Rather, as to the Highfills and Lot 8, the 1979 court awarded to the Highfills a 0.07-
acre portion of Lot 8 described in surveyor’s language commencing from the Corps’
monument. The 0.07 acres did not extend as far east as the Peter’s Stone. This grant
matched the land identified by the United States and the Highfills as being at issue;
the United States had sought to quiet title to this small, disputed portion of Lot 8,
and the Highfills had not counterclaimed to bring the apparent entirety of Lot 8 into
the case.
As to the Bolers, the 1979 court ordered no specific remedy. The Bolers had
built a deck that encroached on the land that was in dispute in their case. The court
ordered the Bolers and the Corps to enter into negotiations, devise a solution, and
report back to the court. There is nothing in the record to indicate what, if anything,
the Bolers and the Corps did in response to the court’s order. In 1989, the United
States filed the 1979 federal district court judgment with the county recorder.
C. The Present Owners and the Present Dispute
In 2019, the present plaintiffs, the Gambrells, purchased Lots 7 and 9–15 of
the subdivision except for the north 10 feet of Lot 9 (the lot adjacent to and
immediately to the south of the previously contested Lot 8). In January 2020, the
Gambrells approached the Corps to obtain a permit for clearing vegetation from land
near their lots. At that time, the Corps expressly notified the Gambrells of the Corps’
understanding that the true centerline was marked by the Corps’ surveying

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monument rather than the Peter’s Stone and that the Corps’ land extended west to
that monument.
When the Gambrells purchased their lots, the Corps’ monument had been in
place for approximately 45 years. The 1979 judgment had been in place for over 40
years, and it had been in the county land records for over 30 years. The Gambrells
did not commission a survey. By the time of the Gambrells’ purchase, a house had
been built on Lots 10 and 11, and the northeast corner of the house extended east,
across the line marked by the Corps’ monument and into the disputed area.
The Gambrells initiated the present quiet title action under the Act in 2021.
The United States moved for summary judgment citing the 1979 judgment as
recorded in 1989 and referencing the 1974 monument. According to the United
States, the 1979 judgment did not finally resolve questions regarding the location of
the eastern boundary of Lot 8 much less the boundaries of Lot 7 or Lots 9–11 of the
subdivision. The United States, therefore, asserted that the 1974 monument and the
1979 judgment provided, at most, notice to the world of a potential dispute and
blemish on title.
The Gambrells resisted. They also moved for summary judgment on the
merits, seeking resolution of the quiet title matter in their favor. They characterized
the 1979 judgment as effecting a reformation of the 1956 deed between the Meltons
and the Corps. They also characterized the 1989 recording of the judgment as
providing effective notice to the world (themselves included)2 that the Peter’s Stone
2 The Gambrells raised for the first time on appeal an argument that the 1979
judgment did not lie in their chain of title such that it could not have put them on
constructive notice. See Gross v. Watts, 104 S.W. 30, 36 (Mo. 1907) (“[A] deed or
instrument lying outside of the purchaser’s chain of title imports no notice to him.”);
see also Basore v. Johnson, 689 S.W.2d 103, 109–10 (Mo. Ct. App. 1985). By not
raising this argument below, it was waived. See United States v. Hirani, 824 F.3d
741, 751 (8th Cir. 2016) (“Ordinarily, we will not consider an argument raised for
the first time on appeal.”). At any rate, without their present arguments based on the
purported conclusiveness of the 1979 judgment, the Gambrells are left with the

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marked: (1) the western boundary of the 1956 Corps purchase, and (2) the eastern
boundary of the subdivision. According to the Gambrells, the Act’s 12-year statute
of limitations could not have been triggered until the United States took some action
after 1979 that was inconsistent with the Gambrells’ interpretation of the 1979
judgment. The Gambrells identified their own 2020 discussion with Corps personnel
involving a vegetation permit as the triggering event providing actual notice of the
United States’ adverse claim to the land between the Peter’s Stone and the Corps’
surveying monument. Finally, the Gambrells argued the United States was barred
by collateral estoppel from denying that the 1979 judgment had reformed the 1956
deed by treating the true centerline as the Peter’s Stone.
The court acknowledged the Gambrells’ assertion that the 1989 recording
provided clear notice to the world of the 1979 judgment. The court, however,
concluded that the recorded judgment identified the disputed centerline as an issue
without clearly establishing the Peter’s Stone as the eastern boundary of Lot 8. The
court noted that the 1979 judgment provided only a limited remedy to the Highfills
and said nothing regarding Lots 7 or Lots 9–11, whose owners had not been parties
to the earlier action. Finally, the district court emphasized that the triggering event
for the Act’s statute of limitations is not notice or constructive notice of conclusive
proof of a valid and meritorious claim by the United States. Rather, the Act sets a
low bar for statute of limitations purposes; the triggering event need only be
constructive notice of a reasonable claim by the United States. Based on the
foregoing, the court applied the statute of limitations and granted summary judgment
for the United States. In doing so, the district court noted that the grant of summary
judgment resolved nothing as to the parties’ actual boundary dispute. Rather, it left
the United States free to bring its own quiet title action and left the Gambrells free
to risk acting on their belief of the relevant centerline’s location.
Peter’s Stone and the 1974 monument. These conspicuous physical items together,
and in the absence of the judgment, easily provided physical constructive notice to
the Gambrells’ predecessors of a potential dispute.

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II.
We review de novo a grant of summary judgment based on a statute of
limitations. See Knapp v. FAG Bearings, LLC, 69 F.4th 513, 516 (8th Cir. 2023).
The Act provides, “Any civil action under this section, except for an action brought
by a State, shall be barred unless it is commenced within twelve years of the date
upon which it accrued. Such action shall be deemed to have accrued on the date the
plaintiff or his predecessor in interest knew or should have known of the claim of
the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2409a(g). Recently, the Supreme Court clarified
that the statute of limitations in the Act is non-jurisdictional. See Wilkins v. United
States, 598 U.S. 152, 165 (2023) (statute of limitations is non-jurisdictional). But in
doing so, the Court cast no doubt on our long-standing treatment of the Act’s statute
of limitations’ trigger as light: all that is required is constructive notice that the
government holds a reasonable claim to some interest in the property. See Spirit
Lake Tribe v. North Dakota, 262 F.3d 732, 738 (8th Cir. 2001), abrogated on other
grounds by Wilkins, 598 U.S. at 165; see also North Dakota v. Block, 789 F.2d 1308,
1312–13 (8th Cir. 1986) (same). In describing the trigger as light, we have noted
that even “invalid” claims may start the limitations period and courts may not
demand a high level of either clarity or claim merit when considering the issue of
constructive notice:
The 12-year limitations period begins when a plaintiff knows or should
know of the government’s adverse land claim. This standard does not
require the government to provide explicit notice of its claim. The
government’s claim need not be “clear and unambiguous.”
“Knowledge of the claim’s full contours is not required. All that is
necessary is a reasonable awareness that the Government claims some
interest adverse to the plaintiffs.”
Further, the government’s interest “need not amount to full legal title
. . . . As long as the interest claimed is a ‘cloud on title,’ or a reasonable
claim with a substantial basis, it constitutes a ‘claim’ for purposes of
triggering the twelve-year statute of limitations.” Even invalid
government claims trigger the QTA limitations period. Simply put, the

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limitations period is triggered when a landowner has reason to know
that the government claims some type of adverse interest in that land.
Spirit Lake Tribe, 262 F.3d at 738 (citations omitted). In our view, this light trigger
makes perfect sense. The Act is already somewhat generous to plaintiffs. Id. at 737.
It reflects an express waiver of sovereign immunity and contains a lengthy 12-year
limitations period. Id. But, because evidence may grow stale and government
personnel frequently change, the light trigger cabins the risk that the United States
might be hailed into court involuntarily, long after the true genesis of a land dispute.
Given this low threshold, the controlling question in the present case asks
whether the 1979 judgment provided constructive notice of: (1) an ongoing
“reasonable claim with a substantial basis,” id. at 738, or (2) a sufficiently clear
resolution of the centerline issue such that some additional adverse action or claim
by the United States was required to start the limitations period. For several reasons,
we conclude the 1979 judgment provided constructive notice of a qualifying and
unresolved claim.
First, erection of the monument in the early 1970s, the presence of the Peter’s
Stone, and references to the stone in the 1962 plat map provide a fair degree of notice
to purchasers of subdivision lots that a United States claim may arise. Second, the
owners of Lots 7 and 9–11 were not parties to the prior action. Evidence cited in the
1979 judgment included anecdotal reports of discussions between Corps personnel
and adjacent landowners. The evidence, therefore, was not limited merely to
undisputed land records or inferences to be drawn from such records. Rather, the
evidence depended on the litigation decisions and choices of the parties to the suit.
The evidence very well may have differed if the other lot owners had been parties to
the action.
Third, as stated above, the 1979 judgment was not entirely clear as to the
boundaries of Lot 8 itself, much less the boundaries of lots owned by persons not
party to the suit. The 1979 judgment awarded only a small portion of Lot 8 to the

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Highfills; it did not grant the Highfills an area of land extending to a north-south line
located at the Peter’s Stone. And the 1979 judgment defined that small area of land
using a description commencing from the Corps’ monument. The United States had
identified only a portion of Lot 8 in its complaint under the Act, and for whatever
reason, the Highfills did not counterclaim to seek a greater remedy. If the 1979
judgment adverse to the United States did not expressly award to the actual
defendants the entirety of Lot 8 (as defined by their theory of the case), it certainly
did not put to rest the possibility of future claims involving other lots and the same
disputed centerline.
Most importantly, none of these potential sources of notice are required to
prove the existence of a winning claim for the United States. Collectively, these
several sources of uncertainty regarding the scope of the 1979 judgment demonstrate
that there continued to exist at least “a reasonable claim with a substantial basis.”
Spirit Lake Tribe, 262 F.3d at 738.
Regarding collateral estoppel, the district court was correct to reject the
theory. The Gambrells and their predecessors-in-interest were not parties to the
action resulting in the 1979 judgment. When an unrelated party later attempts to
bind a prior litigant through issue preclusion, or collateral estoppel, courts refer to
the attempted estoppel as “nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel.” United States
v. Mendoza, 464 U.S. 154, 157 (1984). As the Court explained in detail in Mendoza,
nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel does not apply against the United States
government for several reasons: (1) the vast amount of litigation the government
conducts; (2) the policy choices inherent in choosing to begin or terminate any
particular litigation; (3) the prudential considerations inherent in the solicitor
general’s decisions to file appeals; (4) the need for “successive Administrations of
the Executive Branch to take differing positions with respect to the resolution of a
particular issue” for myriad policy reasons; and (5) the need to permit the ongoing
development of important areas of the law. Id. at 160–61. In simple terms, “the
Government is not in a position identical to that of a private litigant.” Id. at 159
(quoting INS v. Hibi, 414 U.S. 5, 8 (1973) (per curiam)). And here, it is easy to

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understand the likely reason the government did not appeal the 1979 judgment. The
district court ordered the transfer of a small portion of land to the Highfills,
apparently a small portion of land most directly affecting a structure on the land.
Prior to the 1970s litigation, the United States had offered to sell the disputed portion
to the Highfills for $600. Had the court in 1979 ordered relief more broadly, the
government may have appealed. Similarly, had the Highfills counterclaimed for the
entirety of Lot 8, or if the owners of Lots 7 and 9–10 been voluntarily or involuntarily
joined to the earlier action, the course of the litigation and the choice to appeal may
have differed.
Finally, regarding the practical effect of today’s ruling, the district court
wisely cited language from Block noting that a statute of limitations ruling on a Quiet
Title Act claim does not resolve the underlying real estate dispute. See Block, 789
F.2d at 1314 (“A [Quiet Title Act statute of limitations] dismissal . . . does not quiet
title to the property in the United States. The title dispute remains unresolved.
Nothing prevents the claimant from continuing to assert his title, in hope of inducing
the United States to file its own quiet title suit, in which the matter would finally be
put to rest on the merits.” (quoting Block v. North Dakota, 461 U.S. 273, 291–92
(1983))). The United States thus remains free to bring a quiet title action. And the
Gambrells remain free to accept the risk of acting upon their view of the boundary
in an effort to get what they want, induce negotiations, or induce the United States
to file suit.
We affirm the judgment of the district court.
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