Parker v. Morrill, 106 U.S. 1
Case details
Citation
106 U.S. 1
Full caption
Parker v. Morrill.
Country
United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Parker v . Morrill .
An appeal will be dismissed where it does not appear by the record, or otherwise, that the value of the matter in dispute exceeds $5,000.
Motion to dismiss an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of West Virginia.
The case is stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. Gideon B. Camden in support of the motion.
Mr. B. B. Lord, contra.
Mb . Chief Justic e Waite delivered the opinion of the court. ,
This is a motion to dismiss for the reason that it does not appear in the record or by affidavits that the value of the matter in dispute exceeds $5,000. The record shows that Willard Parker, Jr., the appellant, as the owner of one undivided twentieth part of a large tract of land in West Virginia, embracing within its boundaries several hundred thousand acres, filed his bill in equity against Willard Parker, Sen., as the owner of the remaining nineteen-twentieths, and Morrill, the appellee, for a partition as between himself and Parker, senior, and to remove a cloud upon the title to a part of the tract caused by a claim set up by Morrill. Upon the hearing the court below dismissed the bill as to Morrill, and from a
VOL. XVI. 1 p. 2decree to that effect Parker, junior, took this appeal. Parker, senior, did not appear as an actor in the court below, and has not united in the appeal.
The lands claimed by Morrill are not described either in the bill or in the answer of Morrill, otherwise than by reference to certain patents under which he assumed to hold. These patents. covered between fifty and sixty thousand acres. In one of the depositions it is shown that when the suit was begun Morrill claimed about twenty-five thousand acres. The value of the property is nowhere stated. The whole tract in which Parker, junior, claimed his undivided interest included very much more than the Morrill lands. On the 11th of January, 1854, this whole tract was conveyed to Peter Clark by deed reciting a consideration of 83,090. Clark, on the 29th of March, 1854, conveyed it to William W. Campbell by deed, in which the consideration is stated to have been 88,000. On the 5th of May, 1858, Campbell conveyed to Parker, senior, for a nominal consideration, and on the 2d of November, 1872, Parker, senior, conveyed the one undivided twentieth to Parker, junior, for 82,000. In his petition for this appeal, filed Sept. 8, 1880, Parker, junior, states the value of the lands claimed by Morrill to be over 82,000. Notice of the present motion was served on the counsel for the appellant in May last. The brief in support of the motion was filed here on the 6th of May. That of the appellant was filed on the 7th of October. Notwithstanding the dismissal was claimed on account of the value of the matter in dispute, no attempt has been made by the appellant to supply the defect in the record by affidavits, as under our practice might have been done, but to defeat the motion he relies entirely on the evidence of value to be found in the record.
As the case stands, only the interest of Parker, junior, in the lands is in question here. This is one undivided twentieth part only. As Parker, senior, has not appealed, the value of his interest in the property cannot be taken into the account. The claim of Morrill is only for twenty-five thousand acres. One-twentieth of this would be twelve hundred and fifty acres, and certainly, in the light of the facts appearing all through the record, we cannot say that their value exceeds 85,000.
Appeal dismissed.
Bostw ick v . Brinkerhof f .
A judgment of reversal by a State court, with leave for further proceedings in the court of original jurisdiction, is not subject to review here.
Motion to dismiss a writ of error to the Court of Appeals of the State of New York.
The case is stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. J. Hervey Cook in support of the motion.
Mr. E. L. Francherà contra.
Mr . Chief Justic e Wait e delivered the opinion of the court.
This was a suit begun in the Supreme Court of the State of New York by a stockholder in a national bank against the directors, to recover damages for their negligence in the performance of their official duties. A demurrer was filed to the complaint, which raised, among others, the question whether such an action could be brought in a State court. The Supreme Court at special term sustained the demurrer and dismissed the complaint. This judgment was affirmed at general term. An appeal was then taken to the Court of Appeals, where it was ordered and adjudged “ that the judgment of the general term . . . be . . . reversed and judgment rendered for plaintiff on demurrer with costs, with leave to the defendants to withdraw the demurrer within thirty days, on payment of costs, . . . and to answer the complaint.” It was also further ordered that the record and the proceedings in the Court of Appeals be remitted to the Supreme Court, “ there to be proceeded upon according to law.” From this judgment of the Court of Appeals a writ of error was taken to this court, which the defendant in error now moves to dismiss because the judgment to be reviewed is not a final judgment.
The rule is well settled and of long standing that a judgment or decree to be final, within the meaning of that term as used m the acts of Congress giving this court jurisdiction on appeals and writs of error, must terminate the litigation between the parties on the merits of the case, so that if there should be an affirmance here, the court below would have nothing to do but p. 4to execute the judgment or decree it had already rendered. Whiting v. Bank of United States, 13 Pet. 6 ; Forgay n . Conrad, 6 How. 201; Craighead n . Wilson, 18 id. 199; Beebe v. Bussell, 19 id. 283; Bronson v. Bailroad Company, 2 Black, 524; Thomson v. Dean, 7 Wall. 342; St. Clair County v. Lovingston, 18 id. 628; Parcels v. Johnson, 20 id. 653; Bailroad Company v. Swasey, 23 id. 405; Crosby v. Buchanan, id. 420; Commissioners v. Lucas, 93 U. S. 108. It has not always been easy to decide when decrees in equity are final within this rule, and there may be some apparent conflict in the cases on that subject, but in the common-law courts the question has never been a difficult one. If the judgment is not one which disposes of the whole case on its merits, it is not final. Consequently it has been uniformly held that a judgment of reversal with leave for further proceedings in the court below cannot be brought here on writ of error. Brown n . Union Bank, 4 How. 465; Pepper n . Dunlap, 5 id. 51; Tracy v. Holcombe, 24 id. 426; Moore v. Bobbins, 18 Wall. 588 ; McComb n . Knox County, 91 U. S. 1; Baker v. White, 92 id. 176; Davis v. Crouch, 94 id. 514. This clearly is a judgment of that kind. The highest court of the State has decided that the suit may be maintained in the. courts of the State. To that extent the litigation between the parties has been terminated, so far as the State courts are concerned; but it still remains to decide whether the directors have in fact been guilty of the negligence complained of, and, if so, what damages the stockholders have sustained in consequence of their neglect. The Court of Appeals has given the defendants leave to answer the complaint, and the trial court has been directed to proceed with the suit accordingly. Such being the case, it can in no sense be said that the judgment we are now called on to review terminates the litigation in the suit.
Writ dismissed.
Ex parte Baltim ore and Ohio Railroad Comp any .
An appeal will not lie from a decree of the Circuit Court, which adjudged to none of the' libellants in a collision suit, who had distinct causes of action against the vessel at fault, a sum exceeding $5,000.
Petition for mandamus.
A collision occurred in the harbor of Baltimore, Maryland, between the steamer “ Knickerbocker,” owned by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and the barge “ J. J. Munger,” owned by Jeannette Maxon. The barge was loaded with grain belonging to the partnership firm of J. & C. Moore & Co. Both the barge and her cargo were injured in the collision, and the owner of the barge united with the owners of the cargo in a libel against the steamer to recover the damages they had respectively sustained. The suit thus begun terminated in a decree in the Circuit Court for the District of Maryland in favor of the owner of the barge for $1,471.20, and in favor of the owners of the cargo for $3,709.13. The railroad company, as the claimant of the steamer, prayed an appeal to this court, which was refused by the Circuit Court on the ground that the value of the matter in dispute between the steamer and the respective libellants was less than $5,000. The company now asks a mandamus from this court requiring the Circuit Court to allow an appeal.
Mr. Eben J. D. Cross for the petitioner.
Mr. John H. Thomas, contra.
Mr . Chief Justice Waite , after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
It is. impossible to distinguish this case in principle from Oliver v. Alexander, 6 Pet. 143; Stratton v. Jarvis, 8 id. 4; Spear Vi Place, 11 How. 522 ; and Rich v. Lambert, 12 id. 347, under which, for half a century, it has been held that when in admiralty distinct causes of action in favor of distinct parties, growing out of the same transaction, are united in one suit, according to the practice of the courts of that jurisdiction, distinct decrees in . favor of or against distinct parties cannot be p. 66 Ex pa rte Baltim ore and Ohio R.R. Co. [Sup. Ct.
joined to give this court jurisdiction on appeal. In Seaver v. Bigelows, 5 Wall. 208; Paving Company v. Mulford, 100 U. S. 147; and Russell v. Stansell, 105 id. 303, this rule was applied to analogous cases in equity.
The cases of Shields v. Thomas, 17 How. 3; Market Company v. Hoffman, 101 U. S. 112 ; and The Connemara, 103 id. 754, relied on in support of the present application, stand on an entirely different principle. There the controversies were about matters in which the several claimants were interested collectively under a common title. They each had an undivided interest in the claim, and it was perfectly immaterial to their adversaries how the recovery was shared among them. If a dispute arose about the division, it would be between the claimants themselves, and not with those against whom the claim was made. The distinction between the two classes of cases was clearly stated by Chief Justice Taney in Shields v. Thomas, and that case was held to be within the latter class. It may not always be easy to determine the class to which a particular case belongs, but the rule recognizing the existence of the two classes has long been established.
Neither is the case of The Mamie, 105 U. S. 773, an authority in support of this application. That was a suit by the owners of the pleasure-yacht “ Mamie ” to obtain the benefit of the act of Congress limiting the liability of vessel owners. Rev. Stat., sects. 4283 to 4289. The aggregate of the claims against the yacht was $65,000, but no single claim exceeded $5,000. The theory of the proceeding authorized by this act of Congress is, that the owner brings into court the fund which he says belongs to all who have claims against him or his vessel growing out of the loss, and surrenders it to them collectively in satisfaction of their demands. If he succeeds, all the claimants have a common interest in the fund thus created, and are entitled to have it divided between them in proportion to the amount of their respective claims. With this division the owner of the vessel has nothing to do. He surrenders the fund, and calls on all who have claims against him growing out of the loss to come in and divide it among themselves. The controversy in the suit is not in respect to his liability to the different parties in interest, but as to his right to surrender the p. 7fund and be discharged of all further liability. His dispute is not with any one claimant separately, but with all collectively. He insists that his liability in the aggregate does not exceed the value of his interest in the vessel; they, that he must pay all their several demands amount to. He does not seek to have it determined how much he owes each one of them, but to what extent he is liable to them collectively. The difference between what he admits his liability to be, and the aggregate amount of the demands against him, is the amount in dispute. In the case of The Mamie this difference was more than $5,000, and we consequently took jurisdiction.
It follows that the Circuit Court properly refused to allow the appeal, and the petition for a mandamus is therefore
Denied.
1
After the adjournment without day of a term, whereat a final judgment on a verdict was rendered by one justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and an appeal taken therefrom to the general term, but no bill of exceptions or case stated filed, a new trial cannot be granted upon a case stated filed by him at a subsequent term.
2
When a verdict and a judgment for the plaintiff were wrongly set aside, and the error appears of record, he may, without a bill of exceptions, avail himself of it upon a writ of error to reverse a final judgment afterwards rendered against him.
3
When a judgment for the plaintiff in a personal action was erroneously set aside, and a subsequent final judgment against him is brought up by writ of error, pending which he dies, this court will affirm the first judgment nunc pro tunc.