Edenborn v. Wigton

• Decision Date: 11 January 1935
• Docket Number: No. 7366.,7366.
• Citation: 74 F.2d 374
• Parties: EDENBORN v. WIGTON. SAME v. MANN.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

74 F.2d 374 (1934)

EDENBORN v. WIGTON.^*

SAME v. MANN.

No. 7366.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

December 6, 1934.

Rehearing Denied January 11, 1935.

R. E. Milling and R. C. Milling, both of New Orleans, La., and Allen Rendall and A. B. Freyer, both of Shreveport, La., for appellant.

S. L. Herold and T. Overton Brooks, both of Shreveport, La., for appellees.

Before BRYAN, SIBLEY, and HUTCHESON, Circuit Judges.

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

Mrs. Wigton, appellee in one of the suits, is a niece, her brother, August Mann, appellee in the other, is a nephew, and they, with another brother and sister as sole heirs of William Edenborn, deceased, succeeded to his entire separate estate. Mrs. Edenborn is the widow, and, while the settlements with and transfers to her stand, the sole owner of "all property of which William Edenborn died possessed, whether same was community or separate property." This consolidated appeal is from interlocutory decrees enjoining her in respect to certain properties in which appellees claim interests, and impounding them in the hands of custodians. She claims both that jurisdiction of the suits was erroneously taken, and that the injunctive and custodianship orders were improperly granted. The point she makes against the jurisdiction is that it appears on the face of all of the proceedings that plaintiffs' suits, while nominally separate and seeking only individual relief, are in fact joint ones to which the other sister and brother are parties so indispensable that relief cannot be granted plaintiff in it without affecting them. She insists that the settlement of 1929, which each plaintiff directly attacks, was bottomed on and followed the settlement and transfer agreements made in 1926 between her and all the heirs and the decree of the probate court entered in the same year adjudging all the property of the succession to belong to her. She argues that these may not be set aside or limited as to one of the parties except in proceedings in which all are parties. She argues further that, if each plaintiff might, in individual suits limited in effect to declaring rights, obtain a decree establishing appellant's trusteeship as to each to the extent of the interest each claims, still these suits must fail as brought because the relief sought and granted in each requires seizure and disposition in a suit to which only two are parties, of property which the petition in each suit shows is owned by several. She points out, too, as a fundamental obstacle to the suits, in effect as she claims actions to annul state probate proceedings, that they are not cognizable in a federal equity court, for the Louisiana law gives full, complete, and adequate remedy at law by actions of revendication.¹

Appellees, insisting that appellant has completely misapprehended the nature of their suits, deny that they seek in them to set aside or annul probate proceedings, or to attack and set aside, as completely invalid, joint instruments of settlement. They insist that their suits, brought under the doctrine of Arrowsmith v. Gleason, 129 U. S. 101, 9 S. Ct. 237, 32 L. Ed. 630, are not suits to control, supervise, or annul proceedings of state courts, but are personal suits in which the court, scrutinizing the conduct of Mrs. Edenborn, will, if it finds that she has been guilty of fraud or imposition in obtaining the decree and the instruments of transfer or settlement she relies on, deprive her of the benefits of them and of any inequitable advantage which she has derived under them.² Their case, they say, invokes only the settled jurisdiction of a court of chancery to establish and enforce trusts, by making those holding a fiduciary relation account to those they have wronged. Payne v. Hook, 7 Wall. 425, 19 L. Ed. 260; Waterman v. Canal-Louisiana Bank & Trust Co., 215 U. S. 33, 30 S. Ct. 10, 54 L. Ed. 80; Williams v. Crabb (C. C. A.) 117 F. 193, 59 L. R. A. 425; Omaha Nat. Bank v. Federal Reserve Bank (C. C. A.) 26 F.(2d) 884; United States v. Dunn, 268 U. S. 121, 45 S. Ct. 451, 69 L. Ed. 876; Independent Coal & Coke Co. v. United States, 274 U. S. 640, 47 S. Ct. 714, 71 L. Ed. 1270; Oliver v. Piatt, 3 How. 333, 11 L. Ed. 622.

Upon the point appellant makes, that, granting the existence of the general rule, plaintiffs' suits as brought must still fail for want of jurisdiction because of the absence of indispensable parties, appellees say that this objection goes not to the jurisdiction of the court as a federal court, but to its discretion as a court of equity in exercising jurisdiction as a matter of convenience, Hazeltine Corporation v. White (C. C. A.) 68 F.(2d) 715; Dyer v. Stauffer (C. C. A.) 19 F.(2d) 922; General Investment Co. v. New York Central, 271 U. S. 228, 46 S. Ct. 496, 70 L. Ed. 920, and that there was no abuse of discretion here, Payne v. Hook, Waterman v. Bank, Williams v. Crabb, supra, and Commercial Casualty Ins. Co. v. Lawhead (C. C. A.) 62 F.(2d) 928.

The whole controversy upon the merits is over whether Edenborn left a substantial separate estate, and whether, if he did, the settlements with and transfers from his nieces and nephews which appellant got were obtained by fraud and overreaching. Appellees' claim is that the separate estate was of the value of eight or ten millions of dollars, the community of two or three millions, and that they were falsely and fraudulently induced, by their confidence in and reliance upon Mrs. Edenborn, their aunt, to accept her statements that there was no separate estate and to settle for a mere pittance; that as part of the settlement and so induced they signed papers and made appearances in the probate court and executed settlements and transfers; that the properties which Mrs. Edenborn got possession of through these means are still held in converted form by her in bonds, notes, and other securities, in trust as to each plaintiff, to the extent of his interest.

Plaintiffs claimed alternatively that, if any of the property left by Edenborn which they claim as separate property was not in fact separate property, but was property of the community, then the community had obtained that property from the separate estate under such circumstances that it stood charged as debtor to the separate estate for the value of it.

The case coming here on appeal from an interlocutory order, both appellant and appellees recognize that ordinarily not the merits, but only whether in granting the order there has been an abuse of discretion, will be considered here. Butler v. Schulte, Inc. (C. C. A.) 67 F.(2d) 632; Rogers v. Hill, 289 U. S. 582, 53 S. Ct. 731, 77 L. Ed. 1385, 88 A. L. R. 744; Alabama v. United States, 279 U. S. 231, 49 S. Ct. 266, 73 L. Ed. 675. Appellant argues that discretion was, appellees that it was not, abused. Appellant going further insists that the case is on the pleadings and the face of the record so without merit that this court should say so and order its dismissal. Mecanno v. Wanamaker, 253 U. S. 136, 40 S. Ct. 463, 64 L. Ed. 822.

It is apparent that plaintiffs and their brother and sister have the same interests and are pressing the same claims, and that, if brought into the suit, they would have to be aligned on the same side. Thomas v. Anderson (C. C. A.) 223 F. 41, 42. This would oust the jurisdiction, as it appears, not from plaintiffs' petitions, but from the record, that the...