Aetna Insurance Co. v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pac. R. Co.
| Decision Date | 19 January 1956 |
| Docket Number | No. 5134.,5134. |
| Citation | 229 F.2d 584 |
| Parties | AETNA INSURANCE COMPANY, a corporation, et al., Appellants, v. CHICAGO, ROCK ISLAND AND PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
J. T. Pincus, Chicago, Ill. (Donald N. Clausen, Herbert W. Hirsh, Clausen, Hirsh & Miller, Chicago, Ill., Donald C. Little and Frank L. Bates, Kansas City, Mo., on the brief), for appellants.
Clayton M. Davis, Topeka, Kan. (Milton V. Thompson, Chicago, Ill., and Mark L. Bennett, Topeka, Kan., on the brief), for appellee.
Before PHILLIPS, Chief Judge, MURRAH, Circuit Judge, and RICE, District Judge.
In this declaratory action the question on appeal is the correctness of the trial court's judgment dismissing the action as to some of the parties plaintiff for lack of jurisdictional amount in controversy, and as to other parties plaintiff, because of the pendency of a suit in the state court involving the same subject matter between the same parties.
The undisputed facts are well stated in the exhaustive and well-reasoned opinion of the trial court, reported in 127 F.Supp. 895. We agree with the trial court's reasoning and conclusions and should be content to rest our decision there if it were not for appellants' reliance upon two recent cases not cited in the trial court's opinion and apparently not relied upon there. The first is Yuba Consolidated Gold Fields v. Kilkeary, 9 Cir., 206 F.2d 884, wherein one plaintiff filed a complaint in the nature of a bill of peace seeking to avoid a multiplicity of legal actions against it by a determination in one equity suit of its liability asserted in hundreds of claims for damages against it resulting from floods of a river. The potential liabilities to each of the defendants were separate and distinct, but they grew out of one occurrence. The right asserted by the plaintiff was to be free of liability to all of the defendants arising out of the one occurrence — a flood. The value of that right to the plaintiff was the jurisdictional test, and it far exceeded the requisite jurisdictional amount. In addition, some of the claims against it filed in the state court for less than the jurisdictional amount were removed to the federal court along with other claims in excess of the jurisdictional amount. The trial court exercised its statutory discretion under § 1441(c), Title 28 U.S. C.A., to retain jurisdiction of all of the related claims to expedite the comprehensive disposition of the entire controversy.
In the second case, Manufacturers Casualty Insurance Co. v. Coker, 4 Cir., 219 F.2d 631, one plaintiff brought suit for a declaratory judgment of nonliability to several defendants with separate claims against it. Jurisdiction was sustained on the theory that although each of the claims against the plaintiff was less than $3,000, all of the claims were nevertheless dependent upon the $25,000 coverage of the plaintiff's policy, no part of which was allocated to any individual claim. The court was also of the opinion that since the claims of the defendants against the plaintiff arose out of a single instrument, they could have been aggregated for purposes of jurisdiction in a suit against the plaintiff to establish liability under that instrument. That conclusion is based upon eminent authority approving the aggregation of two or more claims against the same defendant to make up the jurisdictional amount when the plaintiffs unite to enforce a single title or right in which they have "common or undivided interests" against the defendant, if "these claims constitute in their totality an integrated right against the defendant." See Dobie on Federal Procedure, pp. 158, 162.
We agree that claimants may aggregate their claims to enforce a single title or right in which they have an undivided interest, but we seriously doubt whether plaintiffs with only a common or community of interest arising out of a single instrument may aggregate their claims to...
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