Alger v. Peters

• Decision Date: 04 April 1956
• Parties: Mason W. ALGER, Jefferson Davis, W. J. Plotner, Fred Z. Pelletier, John Case and Babbin & Harmon, Inc., a New York corporation, a partnership doing business as The A, B and C Company, and Earl K. Harvey, Appellants, v. Frederick C. PETERS and Berenice Todd Peters, Appellees.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 903

88 So.2d 903

Mason W. ALGER, Jefferson Davis, W. J. Plotner, Fred Z. Pelletier, John Case and Babbin & Harmon, Inc., a New York corporation, a partnership doing business as The A, B and C Company, and Earl K. Harvey, Appellants, v. Frederick C. PETERS and Berenice Todd Peters, Appellees.

Supreme Court of Florida, En Banc.

April 4, 1956.

Rehearing Denied July 31, 1956.

Evans, Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston & Simmons, Miami, for Mason W. Alger.

J. M. Flowers, Miami, for the remaining appellants.

McCune, Hiaasen, Kelley & Crum, Fort Lauderdale, for appellees.

THORNAL, Justice.

The appellants named above were the 'six tenants' against whom a contempt decree was entered on April 22, 1955, as described in our opinion filed this date in the case of South Dade Farms, Inc., v. Peters, Fla., 88 So.2d 891. We refer the reader to the recital of facts and statement of the case in our opinion in South Dade Farms, Inc., v. Peters, in order to present the factual basis for this opinion with reference to the six tenants who are appellants herein.

Appellants assign fourteen points for reversal. We think it necessary to consider only their contentions that the lower court was without jurisdiction to enter the original injunction decree of June 5, 1953, as to them, that the injunction decree did not bind them, and that said decree was an attempted adjudication of their property rights without due process of law.

In reaching our conclusion herein we are reminded that the six tenants were not parties to the original cause. They paid valuable cash considerations for the leases they received in good faith prior to the entry of the final decree. There is no evidence of collusion either among themselves or with South Dade Farms, Inc., the defendant in the main case. The leases to them were executed pursuant to the annual custom recognized by all parties and in accord with annual commitments for renewal of the year-to-year leases subject only to the selection of lands by appellee Peters on or before May 1st of each year. This custom had been recognized for several years. The Chancellor based the contempt decree against the appealing tenants upon a finding that they planted the potatoes with notice of the 'comprehensive all-inclusive contract' of April 26, 1951, and that by planting the potatoes they interfered with the contract rights of the appellees and further that in November, 1953, (six months after they obtained their leases) an agent of Peters told them about the injunctive factors of the decree of June 5, 1953.

We emphasize again that in reaching the conclusion which we have, we are not undertaking to pass upon the rights of the parties in an action for breach of contract. Whether the tenants took the leases with knowledge of the contractual rights of Peters and whether this created any liability between them under the circumstances is not our concern on this appeal and we do not pass upon it. We are here dealing entirely with the isolated problem of whether the appellants committed acts which constituted contempt of court. We could possibly dispose of this appeal by a single reference to the extended quotation from the opinion of this court in the case of Smith v. Whitfield and Sanders, 38 Fla. 211, 20 So. 1012, set out in our opinion in South Dade Farms, Inc., v. Peters, supra. However, the appellees insist that the entry of the contempt decree against the tenants is authorized by former Equity Rule 72, present Equity Rule 3.18, Rules of Civil Procedure, F.S.A., which reads as follows:

'Every person, not being a party in any cause, who has obtained an order or in whose favor an order shall have been made, may enforce obedience to such order by the same process as if he were a party; and every person, not being a party against whom obedience to any order of the court may be enforced, shall be liable to the same process for enforcing obedience to such orders as if he were a party.'

Historically, this rule has been in effect either in the form of a rule or statute since 1842 when a substantially similar rule was adopted by the Supreme Court of the Territory of Florida. For all practical purposes, it is the same as Federal Rule 71, 28 U.S.C.A., which has its origin in the Federal Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, 1 Stat. 73. We mention this to point out that the rule was in effect when the opinion of this court was rendered in Smith v. Whitfield and Sanders, supra, in 1896. An application of the rule in the manner contended for by the appellees would lead us to a conclusion that every person whomsoever is bound by an injunctive decree regardless of whether the court entering the decree ever had jurisdiction of the party and without regard to the effect of the decree on the property rights of the individual despite the absence of due process in the orderly course of a judicial proceeding. We cannot logically be led to such a holding, and we do not find that the rule has been so applied either in the federal or the state courts.

There can be no doubt that the appellants acquired a property right under the six leases which they obtained before the decree was entered and for which they admittedly paid substantial sums of money. Prior to the entry of the decree, the execution of these leases was made known to the appellees as well as to the Chancellor. If the appellees had had any desire or intention to obtain an adjudication with reference to the property rights of these tenants, it would have been a relatively simple matter to have brought them into the case and given them an apportunity to assert their rights in an orderly fashion according to the dicates of due process. Instead of doing this the rights of these appellants under the leases were completely ignored. They were not made parties to the main case by the service of process or in any other fashion. It is so fundamental to our concept of justice that a citation of supporting authorities is unnecessary to hold that the rights of an individual cannot be adjudicated in a judicial proceeding to which he has not been made a party and from which he has literally been excluded by the failure of the moving party to bring him properly into court. Under our system a man's rights cannot be disposed of or otherwise determined by a judicial decree entered in absentia.

Under the particular leases in question the appellants were not acting for or in behalf of South Dade Farms, Inc., the defendant in the main case. South Dade Farms, Inc. did not represent them in the litigation. The appellants enjoyed independent property rights under the leases that could not possibly be adjudicated or otherwise tampered with absent service upon them that would have brought them into the cause and subjected them to the jurisdiction of the court. As to their rights under these particular leases, the final decree of June 5, 1953, was brutum fulmen and they were not bound to recognize it.

An injunctive decree is a personal decree and in entering it a court of equity is usually rendering an in personam judgment that acts on the person of the party affected. See 43 C.J.S., Injunctions, § 168, pp. 793 and 794; and 28 Am.Jur., Injunctions, Sec. 4, p. 199.

While it is true that an injunction decree may affect a particular res and to that extent may in some measure assume the proportion of a decree in rem that thereafter 'runs with the land', we do not consider such an application of the decree before us as being justifiable insofar as the particular leases of these appellants are concerned. In the case at bar the rights of the appellants came into being before the decree was entered. If the leases to them had been executed after the decree, then they would have acquired their property rights subject to the limitations of the decree. The latter, however, was not the case. Their rights were fixed and established before the decree was entered and they could not be deprived of them by the entry of a decree in a cause to which they were not parties. On the proper interpretation of Equity Rule 72 see Barron and Holtzoff, Federal Practice and Procedure, Sec. 1511; and Moore's Federal Practice, Sec. 71.04.

Concerning the enforcement of an injunction decree against one not a party to the cause, we can do no better than to refer to the case of Alemite Mfg. Corp. v. Staff, 2 Cir., 1930, 42 F.2d 832, from which we quote the following by no less an authority than Judge Learned Hand, to-wit:

'We agree that a person who knowingly assists a defendant in violating an injunction subjects himself to civil as well as criminal proceedings for contempt....