Princess Lida of Thurn and Taxis v. Thompson
| Decision Date | 03 January 1939 |
| Docket Number | No. 118,118 |
| Citation | 83 L.Ed. 285,305 U.S. 456,59 S.Ct. 275 |
| Parties | PRINCESS LIDA OF THURN AND TAXIS et al. v. THOMPSON et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Charles H. Tuttle, of New York City, for petitioners.
Messrs. Dean D. Sturgis and W. Brown Higbee, both of Uniontown, Pa., for respondents.
This case presents the question whether the exercise of jurisdiction by a state court over the administration of a trust deprives a federal court of jurisdiction of a later suit involving the same subject matter.
December 6, 1906, Gerald P. Fitzgerald, a citizen of Ireland, and his wife Lida, entered into an agreement with each other and with Josiah V. Thompson, Charles E. Lenhart, and Fitzgerald, as trustees, which recited the marriage of the two first named, that they had three sons, and that, on December 5, 1906, Lida had obtained a decree of divorce in Ireland. The agreement provided for payments of alimony by Gerald to Lida pending an absolute divorce (which was eventually granted), and for payments thereafter by Gerald to the trustees for the benefit of Lida and the children, to be made out of his share of the profits of two partnerships of which he was a member. From these profits Gerald was to pay the trustees for Lida's benefit an annuity of $15,000 for the first three years and $20,000 thereafter. He was further to pay any difference between the amount of the annuity and one-third of his share of the profits annually until a fund should be established in the hands of the trustees amounting to $300,000, in which Lida, the sons, and Gerald were given interests, either of income or principal or both. In the event of death, resignation, or disability of a trustee, or a successor trustee, the vacancy was to be filled by appointment of the two remaining trustees, or, on their failure to appoint, by the Court of Common Pleas of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, on the petition of a remaining trustee or of Lida.
Lida and the three sons are living. Gerald has assigned his interest in the trust to the Second National Bank of Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Gerald performed the agreement until June, 1910, when he repudiated it. Thompson, one of the trustees, Lida and her sons, brought suit in equity in the Common Pleas Court of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, seeking performance of the agreement by Gerald and other relief. Gerald answered praying a declaration that the agreement was void. After a hearing the court entered a decree sustaining the agreement; ordering Gerald to account and to pay what might be shown to be due; removing him as a trustee; fixing a lien upon his partnership interests; and restraining him from encumbering or conveying them until the $300,000 fund contemplated by the agreement should be accumulated in the hands of the trustees.
In March, 1915, the trustees then in office petitioned for leave to amend the agreement and for modification of the earlier decree to provide that Gerald should pay and secure to the trustees the payment of sums sufficient to create two funds, one of $400,000 for Lida's benefit and the other of $300,000 principally for the sons' benefit. The court approved the petition and modified its former decree accordingly. May 25, 1925, the trustees then in office acknowledged receipt of all the sums due under the decree of the court as modified and directed that satisfaction of the decree be entered of record. This was done June 3, 1925.
October 9, 1925, the three acting trustees filed an account in the Common Pleas Court, which, in the absence of exceptions, was confirmed. July 7, 1930, a second and partial account was filed in the same court by two surviving trustees on behalf of themselves and a deceased trustee.
On the next day Lida and her son John brought suit in equity in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against the two trustees and the administrators of the deceased trustee, alleging mismanagement of the trust funds and praying that the trustees be removed and all the defendants be made to account and repay the losses of the estate. Thereafter the Court of Common Pleas extended the time for filing exceptions to the second account and, on February 16, 1931, exceptions were filed by Gerald P. Fitzgerald, Jr. Meantime the trustees moved to dismiss the bill in the federal court for lack of indispensable parties and because the state court had exclusive jurisdiction of the controversy. May 12, 1931, the federal court refused the motion to dismiss and required the defendants to answer, declaring that it would not decide the question of jurisdiction until after answers had been filed. May 18, 1931, the defendants answered setting up that the controversy was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state court. Nothing further was done in the federal suit until April 17, 1937, when the plaintiffs amended their bill. May 5, 1937, the trustees answered the amendment. Meantime, on May 1, 1937, the trustees had presented a petition in the state court for a rule upon the plaintiffs in the District Court, the petitioners herein, to show cause why they should not be restrained from prosecuting their suit in the federal court. After an answer by Lida denying that the Common Pleas Court had control or possession of the trust funds or that any controversy was therein pending when suit was instituted in the federal court, the rule was made absolute June 17, 1937. July 6, 1937, John Fitzgerald, one of the petitioners, applied to the federal court for an injunction to restrain the defendants in the case there pending, the respondents herein, from further prosecution of the proceedings in the state court. On the same day the petitioners took an appeal from the order of the Common Pleas Court to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. July 19, 1937, the trustees filed in the Common Pleas Court a third and partial account of the trust to which exceptions were filed. Testimony was thereafter taken on the exceptions to the second account. September 18, 1937, the federal court temporarily enjoined the defendants in that court, the respondents herein, from further prosecution of the proceedings in the state court to enjoin the plaintiffs, the petitioners herein, from having the jurisdictional issue tried in the District Court, and set November 8, 1937, for a trial of that issue. Trial was accordingly had.
March 21, 1938, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the order of the Common Pleas Court enjoining the petitioners from prosecuting their suit in the District Court,1 and, on the same day, the District Court rendered an opinion holding it had jurisdiction notwithstanding the proceedings in the Common Pleas Court. The District Judge entered no decree but stated that requests for findings of fact, conclusions of law, and a form of decree, might be submitted, and that he would proceed thereafter to try the merits of the cause.
We are thus confronted with a situation where each of the courts claiming jurisdiction has restrained the parties before it from proceeding in the other. In view of this unusual state of affairs, of the importance of the question involved, and of the claim that the action of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is in conflict with our decisions, we granted the writ of certiorari. Princess Lida et al. v. Fitzgerald, 305 U.S. 582, 59 S.Ct. 72, 83 L.Ed. —-.
First. The suit brought in Common Pleas Court in 1910 was for the specific performance of the agreement of December 6, 1906. The decree in that suit declared the agreement valid and commanded performance in accordance with its terms. As the agreement called for a continuing performance, and the decree was for enforcement of that performance, the court retained jurisdiction to render the granted relief effective. It exercised this retained jurisdiction in 1915 when, by consent of the parties, it modified its decree to comport with amendments of the agreement. But the court's jurisdiction under the bill ceased when Fitzgerald had completely performed in accordance with the amended decree of 1915, as evidenced by the trustees' acknowledgment filed of record in the court on June 3, 1925, that the terms of the decree had been satisfied. The trust was created by agreement inter partes, one of whom repudiated and failed to perform it. When performance had been obtained the equity proceeding was at an end; the trust res in the hands of the trustees, who were the creatures of the agreement, then had the same status as if the court had never been called upon to act.
Second. Although the agreement provided that vacancies occurring by death, resignation, or incapacity of a trustee should be filled by the remaining trustees, and that application to the Court of Common Pleas to appoint a new trustee should only be made in the event the trustees in office could not agree on the appointment of a successor, it appears that from time to time trustees presented their resignations to that court and the court purported to accept them. And when the remaining trustees appointed new trustees to fill vacancies they reported their action to the court which sometimes purported to confirm and ratify that action. The record does not disclose that the first method provided in the agreement for filling vacancies ever was impracticable, or that there was occasion for resort to the court. The petitioners contend that in the circumstances, the court's approval was unnecessary and did not amount to an assumption of jurisdiction. We find it unnecessary to pass upon the contention.
Third. The important questions are whether the filing of the trustees' account on July 7, 1930, gave the Common Pleas Court jurisdiction, and, if so, what was the nature and extent of that jurisdiction. The Court of Common Pleas is given 'the jurisdiction and powers of a court of chancery, so far as relates to: * * * The control, removal and discharge of trustees, and the appointment...
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