Hornbuckle v. Toombs
| Decision Date | 01 October 1873 |
| Citation | 85 U.S. 648,21 L.Ed. 966,18 Wall. 648 |
| Parties | HORNBUCKLE v. TOOMBS |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
ERROR to the Supreme Court of the Territory of Montana; the case being thus:
The seventh amendment to the Constitution ordains:
'In suits at common law, where, &c., the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined than according to the rules of the common law.'
An early statute of the United States, the statute commonly known as the Process Act of 1792,1 an act still in force, enacts:
'That the forms of writs, executions, and other process, . . . and the forms and modes of proceeding in suits——
'In those of the common law shall be the same as are now used in the said courts, respectively, in pursuance of the act entitled 'An act to regulate processes in the courts of the United States.'- 'In those of equity and in those of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, according to the principles, rules, and usages which belong to courts of equity and to courts of admiralty respectively, as contradistinguished from courts of common law, except so far as may have been provided for by the act to establish the judicial courts of the United States, subject, however, to such alterations and additions as the said courts respectively shall, in their discretion, deem expedient, or to such regulations as the Supreme Court of the United States shall think proper, from time to time, by rule, to prescribe to any Circuit or District Court concerning the same.'
In this state of fundamental and of statutory law, Congress, on the 26th of May, 1864,2 passed 'An act to provide a temporary government for the Territory of Montana.' It enacted:
The Territory being organized, its legislative assembly, in December, 1867, passed a 'Civil Practice Act' containing these provisions:
In this state of things Toombs brought an action against Hornbuckle in a District Court of the Territory of Montana, for damages caused by the diversion of a stream of water, by which his farm was deprived of irrigation, and for an adjudication of his right to the stream, and an injunction against further diversion. The action was framed and conducted in accordance with the practice as established by the legislative assembly of the Territory, in the provisions last-above quoted.
The case was tried by a jury, who found for the plaintiff, assessed his damage at one dollar, and decided that he was entitled to seventy inches of the water. Upon this verdict the court gave judgment, and awarded an injunction as prayed.
The only errors assigned were based on the intermingling of legal and equitable remedies in one form of action.
Mr. Robert Leech, for the plaintiff in error:
The proceedings are erroneous in that they entirely disregard the distinction between the chancery and common-law jurisdiction conferred by Congress upon the Territorial courts, by the organic act. This court has decided in the cases of Noonan v. Lee,3 Orchard v. Hughes,4 Dunphy v. Kleinsmith,5 Thompson v. Railroad Companies,6 and other cases, that legal and equitable matters cannot be thus confused.
The case of Dunphy v. Kleinsmith was brought here from the Supreme Court of this very Territory of Montana, and this court, in passing upon this legislation and the organic law of the Territory, said:
'It is apparent that the Territorial legislature has no power to pass any law in contravention of the Constitution of the United States, or which shall deprive the Supreme and District Courts of the Territory of chancery as well as common-law jurisdiction.'
In Thompson v. Railroad Companies,7 the court was equally emphatic. It said:
'The Constitution of the United States and the acts of Congress recognize and establish the distinction between law and equity. The remedies in the courts of the United States are, at common law, or in equity, not according to the practice of State courts, but according to the principles of common law and equity, as distinguished and defined in that country from which we derive our knowledge of these principles. 'And although the forms of proceedings and practice in the State courts shall have been adopted in the Circuit Courts of the United States, yet the adoption of the State practice must not be understood as confounding the principles of law and equity, nor as authorizing legal and equitable claims to be blended together in one suit."
Unless, therefore, this court means to disregard its own solemn precedents made, iterated and reiterated, the judgment and decree below must be reversed.
The precedents rest, too, on obvious reason. The organic act of the Territory does not speak of chancery and common-law jurisdiction otherwise than as distinct systems, and the Process Act of 1792—still in force, undoubtedly contemplating the two systems as distinct systems and to be administered separately, and which act is 'not locally inapplicable' to the Territories—has, by the thirteenth section of the organic act 'the same force and effect within the Territory of Montana as elsewhere in the United States.'
Messrs. Montgomery Blair and F. A. Dick, contra.
The only errors assigned are based on the intermingling of legal and quitable remedies in one form of action.
Such an objection would be available in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States. The Process Act of 17928 expressly declared that in suits in equity, and in those of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, in those courts, the forms and modes of proceeding should be according to the principles, rules, and usages which belong to courts of equity and to courts of admiralty respectively, as contradistinguished from courts of common law, subject to such alterations and additions as the said courts respectively should deem expedient, or to such regulations as the Supreme Court should think proper to prescribe. The Supreme Court, in prescribing rules of proceeding for those courts, has always followed the general principle indicated by the law. Whether the Territorial courts are subject to the same regulation is the question which is now fairly presented.
In the case of Orchard v. Hughes9 a majority of this court was of opinion that the Territorial courts were subject to the same general regulations in equity cases which govern the practice in the Circuit and District Courts. That was the case of a foreclosure of a mortgage in the Territorial court of Nebraska, and the court, under a Territorial law, not only decreed a foreclosure and sale of the mortgaged premises, but gave a personal decree against the defendant for the deficiency. We had decided in Noonan v. Lee,10 that under the equity rules prescribed for the Circuit and District Courts, such a decree could not be made. The majority of the court now applied the same rule in the case of Orchard v. Hughes, although it was decided by a Territorial court. Following out the principle involved in that decision, we subsequently, in the case of Dunphy v. Kleinsmith,11 reversed a judgment of the Supreme Court of Montana, on the ground that the case (being in nature of a creditor's bill, filed to reach property which the debtor had fraudulently conveyed) was a clear case of equity, whilst the proceedings therein exhibited no resemblance to equity proceedings, there being a trial by jury, a verdict for damages, and a judgment, on the verdict.
On a careful review of the whole subject we are not satisfied that those decisions are founded on a correct view of the law. By the sixth section of the organic act of the Territory of Montana...
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