Fordyce v. Beecher

• Decision Date: 04 October 1892
• Citation: 21 S.W. 179
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals
• Parties: FORDYCE et al. v. BEECHER.

21 S.W. 179

FORDYCE et al. v. BEECHER.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas.

October 4, 1892.

Appeal from district court, Angelina county; L. B. Hightower, Judge.

Action by C. H. Beecher against S. W. Fordyce and A. H. Swanson, receivers of the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas Railway Company, to recover for injuries sustained by plaintiff by reason of an assault committed upon him by defendants' servants. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal. Reversed.

Finley, Marsh & Butler and Sam H. West, for appellants. Mantooth & Townsend, for appellee.

WILLIAMS, J.

Prior to July, 1889, appellants were appointed, by the circuit court of the United States for the eastern district of Texas, receivers of the properties belonging to the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas Railroad Company in Texas, and were operating its roads. In August, 1889, appellee, claiming to be a passenger on one of the trains thus controlled by appellants, was assaulted and injured by their servants employed to manage it. He brought this suit to recover damages resulting from such injuries. On the 11th day of May, 1891, while this suit was still pending, appellants were finally discharged from the receivership by the court which appointed them; and thereafter duly pleaded in this suit such discharge in bar of further proceedings against them. In the trial below the fact of the final discharge was admitted, and appropriate charges were presented to the court, declaring the law to be that such discharge constituted a complete bar to any judgment against appellants as receivers. The charges were refused, and verdict and judgment were rendered against appellants as receivers, and in this appeal this action of the court below is assigned as error.

The act of the legislature of March 19, 1889, concerning receivers, was not in force when appellants were appointed, but had taken effect when the cause of action accrued to appellee, and was in full operation when this suit was brought, and when appellants were discharged. It provides that the discharge of a receiver shall not have the effect of abating any pending suit upon a cause of action which accrued against him as such receiver, but that such suit may be prosecuted to judgment notwithstanding the discharge. One of the questions which arises as to the operation of those provisions upon this case is, do they apply to and control a discharge by a federal court of a receiver appointed by it? and involved in this is the inquiry as to the power of a state legislature to thus limit the effect of a decree of such a court. The receivers were appointed in the exercise of the chancery jurisdiction which belongs to all of the circuit courts of the United States. That jurisdiction was conferred upon such courts when they were first organized, and in cases in which it is properly called into exercise it is determinable solely by the national legislation. Neither the substantive powers thus conferred nor the rules of practice and procedure through which they are exercised are subject to limitation or modification by the states. This equity jurisdiction, practice, and procedure of the courts is uniform throughout the Union, — is the same in all of the states, — and is beyond the control of state legislatures. These principles have long been settled by the adjudications of the supreme court of the United States. Green's Adm'r v. Creighton, 23 How. 105; Hyde v. Stone, 20 How. 175; Payne v. Hook, 7 Wall. 425; U. S. v. Howland, 4 Wheat. 108. A judgment or decree is the end for which the jurisdiction of a court is exercised. It is only through its judgments and their executions that the power of a court is made efficacious. A law which restricts their power to render judgment is, therefore, a limitation upon the exercise of their jurisdiction; and a law which destroys or impairs the effect which their judgments, without such law, would have, is equally so. It is to be presumed that the federal court properly acquired jurisdiction of the cause in which these receivers were appointed. That jurisdiction embraced power to dispose fully of all interests properly involved in the litigation, and to render all such judgments and decrees as were made appropriate to that end, by the principles of equity jurisprudence as they existed when such courts were organized, with such modifications as have been made from time to time by congress and the rules of those courts, adopted in accordance therewith. That power could be controlled by congress alone. By the principles governing the effect of judgments of courts of equity discharging their receivers, in the absence of the statute under consideration, such a judgment was made a bar to any further suit against such receiver, for liability incurred solely by virtue of his office, and constituted, when pleaded in pending suits, a complete defense. Ryan v. Hays, 62 Tex. 47; Brown v. Gay, 76 Tex. 444, 13 S. W. Rep. 472. If, therefore, the discharge of appellants, when pleaded in this suit, was not a bar to further proceedings, it was because the act of the legislature took from it the effect given it by the law that created and governed the court that pronounced the decree. It is true the statute does not, in terms, attempt to legislate directly upon the effect of the judgments of the courts of the United States, and we will advert to that presently. But if its operation should be what is claimed for it, the result would be much the same as if it had been declared directly that no court of the Union should discharge a receiver while suits were pending in the state courts against him, or that a decree discharging such receiver pending such suits should not bar or abate the actions against him. A state legislature cannot so prescribe, because the national courts are not subject to state authority. It may be said that the statute only prescribes a rule for the guidance of state courts in suits pending before them against receivers in the conduct of further proceedings after the discharge, but a state court must recognize a defense of a party litigant before it, whether it arise through the operation of a decree of another court or not; and the scope of the decree must be determined by the law under which it was pronounced.

It may also be said that, inasmuch as the receiver, when appointed, is, in a certain sense, the representative of the owner of the property committed to his charge, it is competent for the legislature to provide that he shall continue, after his discharge, to be such representative in suits brought before his discharge. The answer is that receivers appointed by federal courts, when they act within the proper limits of their jurisdiction, derive their...