Reno, Russell R.

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Laurence M. Jones as a Property Teacher

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Maryland Law ReviewVolume 38 | Issue 4 Article 3Laurence M. Jones as a Property TeacherRussell R. RenoFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlrPart of the Legal Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Journals at DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. It has been accepted forinclusion in Maryland Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. For more information, please contactsmccarty@law.umaryland.edu.Recommended CitationRussell R. Reno, Laurence M. Jones as a Property Teacher, 38 Md. L. Rev. 623 (1979)Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol38/iss4/3Maryland Law ReviewVolume 38 1979 Number 4©Copyright Maryland Law Review, Inc. 1980LAURENCE M. JONES AS A PROPERTY TEACHERRussell R. Reno*In June of 1978, Professor Laurence M. Jones retired after forty-three years as a Professor of Law, the last thirty-six of which hespent at the University of Maryland. Laurence Jones grew up inClear Lake, Iowa, where his father was a practicing attorney, andattended the University of Iowa, from which he received his B.A.degree. Upon graduation he entered the university's college of lawand received a J.D. degree from the University of Iowa in 1932. Atthat time the J.D. degree was not awarded to all law schoolgraduates but was reserved for honor graduates. While LaurenceJones was a law student, he worked under Professor Percy Bordwell,who was one of the outstanding scholars and teachers in the field ofreal property of his time. In this close association with ProfessorBordwell, Laurence Jones developed his lifelong interest in theproperty field. After he was admitted to the Iowa Bar, LaurenceJones decided to further his legal education with two years ofgraduate study at the Harvard Law School, from which he receivedhis master's degree in 1933 and his S.J.D. degree in 1934. During hissummers, and for a year after he completed his graduate studies, hepracticed law with his father, but he had already decided that hismain objective in life would be to teach law. His decision cameduring the worst part of the Depression, when law schools were notadding any new members to their faculties, but it was not longbefore he received an offer from the Lamar School of Law of EmoryUniversity. He welcomed this opportunity to begin his teachingcareer at one of the leading law schools in the South, joining itsfaculty as assistant professor in 1935.During the next six years Professor Jones taught the propertycourses at Emory and participated in the activities of the GeorgiaBar Association. In 1941, with the decrease in law studentenrollment caused by the military draft, he took a year's leave of* Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland School of Law.(623)MARYLAND LAW REVIEWabsence to serve as Visiting Associate Professor at the University ofMissouri. When this writer was called to active duty as a reserveofficer in June of 1942, Professor Jones joined our faculty as VisitingAssociate Professor and took over the teaching of all of the propertycourses. When the war caused the size of the faculty to be reducedeven further, Professor Jones added the torts and insurance coursesto his teaching load. The end of the war not only brought the returnof this writer from the service in January 1946, but it also caused asudden influx of war veterans to the Law School. That yearProfessor Jones became a permanent member of the University ofMaryland faculty with the rank of professor. From 1946 until theretirement of this writer in 1974, we divided the teaching of theproperty courses at Maryland. We both taught first year propertyclasses, but Professor Jones taught the advanced courses in the fieldof future interests and trusts and estates while this writer taughtthose on real estate transactions and land use planning. During theyears we taught first year property courses together, we were incomplete agreement both on the scope of the course, with itsemphasis upon the history of the development of real property law,and on the necessity for incisive analysis and the use of correct legalterminology in the study of property law. Although we had differentopinions concerning the sequence of the development of the basicproperty topics, all of our students entered the advanced propertycourses with the same background and understanding of thefundamental property concepts.During his thirty-six years on our faculty, Professor Jones didnot confine his legal talents to the classroom; he took an active partin the work of the Maryland Bar Association. During the sixties heacted as a consultant to a special legislative commission which wasappointed to revise the testamentary laws of Maryland and was amember of the Bar Association special legislative commission thatdrafted the Limitations on Rights of Entry and Possibilities ofReverter Act. When the Maryland Bar Association was reorganizedinto sections, Professor Jones became an active member of theTrusts and Estates Section, and continues to serve on its council.Professor Jones also took an active part in the internal operationof the Law School and the University. He served on numerous LawSchool committees, including the curriculum committee, which hechaired for many years. After the University Senate was created,Professor Jones served as one of the Law School representatives tothat faculty organization and for many years sat on its executivecommittee. As a member of the University's committee on tenure, hewas the principal draftsman of the university faculty contract,which established the tenure rules of the University.[VOL. 38PROPERTY TEACHERAlthough he was highly regarded as a property professor,Professor Jones did not always concentrate on property law in hisscholarly pursuits. Before he became engrossed in teaching propertycourses at Emory University, Professor Jones wrote and publishedtwo articles examining the problems state legislators encounter inpreparing legislation in conformance with state or federal constitu-tional provisions. The first article, Constitutional ProvisionsRegulating the Mechanics of Enactment in Iowa,1 dealt with themechanical details that an Iowa statute had to satisfy before it couldbecome a valid legislative enactment. In his second article, SomeConstitutional Limitations on State Sales Taxes,2 Professor Jonesdiscussed the substantive issue of when a state can subject retailsales to a state sales tax without offending the United StatesConstitution. In 1936, when this article was published, taxation ofretail sales was a very important issue; states were in need of a newsource of revenue to supplement the property tax, and a retail salestax was the most likely source. In his analysis of the constitutionalrestrictions placed upon a state's power to tax retail sales, ProfessorJones classified the various taxable sales in three groups: foreignsales, sales taxed by the state of origin of the goods, and sales taxedby the state of destination. As the article pointed out, theconstitutional prohibition against levying any imposts or duty onimports and exports applies only to merchandise received from aforeign country and then only if it remains in the original package.Once such a package was broken and the goods incorporated intothe general stream of state commerce, they could be taxed. Incontrast to the sale of foreign goods, the sale of merchandisebetween states raised a most important problem of whetherimposing a sales tax on the transaction placed a burden oninterstate commerce and was thus prohibited under the commerceclause of the United States Constitution. Professor Jones reasonedthat the constitutionality of any retail sales tax on a transactiondepended on whether the tax was being levied by the state of thegoods' origin or the state of destination, and concluded that a state'simposition of a retail sales tax on goods that were within the state,but which were being sold to an out-of-state buyer, would beunconstitutional. He also concluded that it would be an unconstitu-tional regulation of commerce for the state of destination to taxgoods which, at the time of the sale, were outside the state. In sum,Professor Jones concluded that the merchandise had to pass through1. 21 IOWA L. REV. 79 (1935).2. 20 MINN. L. REV. 461 (1936).1979]MARYLAND LAW REVIEWthe hands of a local merchant before a valid retail sales tax could beimposed. Furthermore, he pointed out that these limitations on thescope of the taxation of retail sales could not be avoided by castingthe tax in the form of an occupational tax rather than a sales tax; nosuch tax on the value of merchandise passing in interstate commercecould be imposed.After Professor Jones became enmeshed in the intricacies of hisFuture Interests courses, the focus of most of his articles shifted tothe field of real property law. Two of the most fascinating problemsthat arise in connection with future interests are the determinationof whether a particular interest is vested or contingent and theapplication of the Rule against Perpetuities, particularly itsapplication to powers of appointment. Professor Jones dealt withthese topics in articles written between 1943 and 1962. His articleentitled Vested and Contingent Remainders, a Suggestion WithRespect to Legal Method3 examined the traditional manner in whichmost courts analyze remainder issues. Professor Jones pointed outthat courts often begin analysis of such problems by classifying theremainder as either vested or contingent, and demonstrated thatcourts employing this distinction in this manner often used it tosolve problems unrelated to vested or contingent characteristics,whether the remainder was alienable or not, whether it wasdescendible or devisable, and whether or not the Rule againstPerpetuities applied to it. After demonstrating that the applicationof the traditional vested-contingent distinction served only toconfuse that area of property law to the point where neither thecourts nor the lawyers could "predict with any degree of accuracywhat [would] be the result in the next case," he suggested that thecourts abandon this rigid approach to remainders and analyze eachcase separately in order to determine the exact nature of theremainder problem involved without a preliminary reference towhether the remainder is vested or contingent.While he was teaching at the University of Maryland, ProfessorJones devoted three articles to some of the thornier problemsgenerated by the Rule against Perpetuitites. Two of these articlesdealt with the application of the rule to powers of appointment. Inthe first, The Rule Against Perpetuities as Applied to Powers ofAppointment in Maryland,4 he wrote a critique of the man-ner in which the Maryland Court of Appeals had applied therule to powers of appointment, analyzing several areas in whichMaryland courts had departed from the generally followed, well-3. 8 MD. L. REv. 1 (1943).4. 18 MD. L. REV. 93 (1958).626 [VOL. 38PROPERTY TEACHERsettled rules. He noted, for example, that in Maryland the generalpower to appoint the property of a trust is in fact limited, in that thetrust donee cannot appoint the property to himself, his creditors, hisestate or the creditors of his estate, but that the Maryland courts hadignored this limitation.In his second article on this subject, The Rule AgainstPerpetuities and Powers of Appointment: An Old ControversyRevived,5 Professor Jones challenged the propriety of the acceptedapproach to validating powers of appointment, which requires thatsuch appointments be exercised within a period encompassing a lifein being, plus 21 years, from the time of its creation. Professor Jonesconcluded that it would be more in keeping with the real purposes ofthe rule - to promote free alienability of property and to preventexcessive control by past generations - to measure the rule periodfrom the moment of the donee's death, the time at which the power isexercised.Professor Jones' third article, Reforming the Law - The RuleAgainst Perpetuities,6 discussed the common law approach to therule and analyzed Maryland's statutory modification - adopting the"wait and see" doctrine - of the common law rule. Under this 1960statute the validity of the property interest is determined on thebasis of the facts existing at the termination of the life estate. In hisarticle, Professor Jones weighed the drawbacks of this legislationagainst the benefit of imposing a limit on the time period duringwhich the deceased donee may control the property, muting hispraise of the statute with insightful suggestions for its improvement.Professor Jones has also written on two personal propertyquestions which are covered in the first year property course andwhich can always be counted on to create excellent discussion by thestudents; they are who bears the loss of a theft or damage to anautomobile in a pay parking lot and who is entitled to the proceedsof a joint bank account when the depositor dies. In 1938, courts werebeginning to hear cases on the issue of liability for damages to carsleft in pay parking lots. In his article entitled The Parking LotCases, Professor Jones analyzed the few cases that existed at thattime and pointed out that "[m]ost of the difficulties [with these caseshad] arisen from an attempt to apply settled principles of law to anew problem, from an attempt to apply an old rule to a new case."He noted further that the courts had classified these parking lotcases into two types. In cases in which an attendant had merely5. 54 IOWA L. REV. 456 (1968).6. 22 MD. L. REV. 269 (1962).7. 27 GEo. L.J. 162 (1938).1979] 627MARYLAND LAW REVIEWcollected the fee and designated the parking area, the courts foundthe relationship to be merely that of licensor-licensee and relievedthe lot operator of liability. On the other hand, when an attendanthad exercised complete or substantial control over the automobile,the courts used the bailor-bailee relationship to create a prima faciecase of negligence on the part of the lot operator.The relationship between owners of a joint bank account whereone party is the sole depositor of money in the account is often ofinterest both to married law students, who usually have jointaccounts with their spouses, and to single students, who often sharejoint accounts with a parent or parents. In an article entitled TheUse of Joint Bank Accounts as a Substitute for TestamentaryDisposition of Property,8 Professor Jones reviewed the five theoriesthat have been applied by courts to uphold the survivor's right to theentire balance in a joint bank account upon death of the depositorand determined that the testamentary, gift, trust, contract andcotenancy theories all failed to express satisfactorily the depositor'sintent to retain complete control over the property until his deathand to specify who will receive it upon the depositor's death. Inconclusion, Professor Jones suggested that, in this context, jointaccounts be recognized for what they are: testamentary dispositionsof property without wills.A problem similar to the joint bank account situation aroseduring World War II when newly issued War Savings Bonds wereregistered under two names. These bonds were completely controlledby Treasury regulations; they were issued under special statutoryprovisions and were not subject to common law doctrines of jointownership. When, in 1950, many questions arose with respect to thetransferability and taxation of, and rights of the survivor in, thesebonds, Professor Jones prepared an article for the Maryland LawReview,9 explaining their ownership and taxation characteristics,and the rights of creditors and survivors under the applicableTreasury regulations.Throughout his entire teaching career Professor Jones retainedan interest in a field of the law unrelated to property which alwaysintrigued him. This was the field of insurance law. On severaloccasions he taught the course on insurance both at Emory and atMaryland. In 1960, when the use of variable annuities first cameinto prominence, he couldn't resist the temptation to take a fling intothe insurance field by publishing an article entitled A Discussion8. 17 U. PiTT. L. REv. 42 (1955).9. United States Savings Bonds, Series E, F, and G, 11 MD. L. REv. 265 (1950).[VOL. 38PROPERTY TEACHERand Analysis of the Valic Decision.10 In Valic, the United StatesSupreme Court dealt with the immediate problem of whether anowner of a variable annuity had to comply with the terms of theSecurities and Investment Companies acts and register with theSecurities and Exchange Commission. The Court held that becausethe amount of a variable annuity was based upon the investmentearnings of the insurance company these annuities were subject tothe regulations of the SEC in the same manner as mutualinvestment funds. This article discussed the broad policy aspect ofthe case: whether the insurance companies issuing variableannuities should be subject to regulation by SEC or left solely to thecontrol of the state insurance commissions. After discussing thebusiness of insurance, the regulation of insurance companies, thenature and regulation of the investment business in general,variable annuities and the Valic decision, Professor Jones concludedthat the issue remained open and that Congress should reexaminethe problem.During his final year of teaching, Professor Jones again turnedto the field of personal property and published an article onCorroborating Evidence as a Substitute for Delivery in Gifts ofChattels.1' In this article he addressed the question of whatcorroborating evidence in support of an oral gift is sufficient tojustify an exception to the traditional rule that there must be aphysical transfer of possession of a chattel in order to effectuate avalid gift. After analyzing the cases in which gifts had beensustained without a physical delivery of the chattel, Professor Jonesconcluded that the true measure of whether an oral gift is validshould be the sufficiency of evidence corroborating the donativeintent evidenced by the oral words of gift. In Professor Jones'opinion, this approach to validating oral gifts should not be treatedas a mere exception to the manual delivery requirement because ititself establishes a suitable standard by which to test the evidencenecessary to establish the gift claim.With Professor Jones' retirement the Law School has lost adedicated teacher who devoted his entire time to working with hisstudents both in the classroom and in his office, and whocontributed through his publications to the clarification and theimprovement of the law. It is the hope of both his colleagues and thelegal profession that he will continue his work with the Trust andEstate Section of the Maryland State Bar Association.10. 5 VILL. L. REV. 407 (1960).11. 12 SUFFOLK U. L. REV. 16 (1978).1979] 629

Laurence M. Jones as a Property Teacher

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