Asher v. G.F. Stearns Land & Lumber Co.
| Decision Date | 04 December 1931 |
| Citation | 241 Ky. 292 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
| Parties | Asher v. G.F. Stearns Land & Lumber Company et al. |
2. Quieting Title. — Where, in action to quiet title, plaintiff showed by amendment that another person had bought original defendant's claim, prayer that new defendant set up claim to land by purchase or otherwise could not enlarge issues beyond claimed purchase from original defendant.
3. Judgment. — Issues presented to and adjudicated by court with jurisdiction of subject-matter and parties cannot thereafter be relitigated by parties or privies.
4. Judgment. — Res judicata does not apply, where court, in rendering judgment, or parties by agreement, reserved certain issues for future determination.
5. Judgment. — Court's refusal, in action to quiet title, to grant motion to consolidate with case against defendant as another's successor to parts of tract with case against defendant individually involving entire tract, held reservation of issues in latter case for independent adjudication.
6. Judgment. — Where court's decision to reserve issues in second action to quiet title for future determination is acquiesced in by plaintiffs, they cannot claim that decision in first action is res judicata of issues in second.
Appeal from Bell Circuit Court.
MARTIN T. KELLY for appellant.
CLEON K. CALVERT, JAMES H. JEFFRIES and J.E. MOORE, JR., for appellees.
Reversing.
The sole question for determination in this case is: Whether or not the trial court correctly sustained a plea of res judicata interposed by appellees and plaintiffs below to the answer of appellant and defendant below, and correctly denied the avoidance matters alleged by defendant against that plea? As a result of such rulings, the judgment sustained plaintiffs' title to the land immediately in litigation located in Leslie county, and denied defendant's claim thereto, which he asserted in his answer, to which the res judicata estoppel was pleaded in an amended reply, and the avoidance matter thereto was set up in a supplemental rejoinder. The court on final submission overruled defendant's demurrer to the plea contained in the amended reply and sustained plaintiffs' demurrer to the matters in avoidance set up in the supplemental rejoinder. The facts out of which the question arises will now be stated.
On and prior to September 12, 1901, the appellee and one of the plaintiffs below, G.F. Stearns Land & Lumber Company, owned, or claimed that it owned, a body of land in Leslie county, some of the timber upon which it had sold to its codefendant below and one of the appellees here, Ford Lumber and Manufacturing Company. On that day plaintiffs (the two lumber companies) filed their joint action against Hugh Ward and others, in which they stated that the former was the owner of the entire body of land which was described in the petition, and that defendants were trespassing upon it and taking timber therefrom and destroying thereon other timber, and which acts they sought to enjoin, and, prayed for a judgment establishing their title as against the defendants therein. Ward answered and alleged that he was the owner of a described body of land, the paper title to which was older than that claimed by plaintiffs, and that, if their patents lapped on any of the land described in his title, it was void, and that he in that event was the owner of the superior title to the extent of the lap, if any, and to that extent only did he claim to own any of the land described in the petition "and no more."
The issues were made in that case (which is designated in the record as action 178, but which we will refer to herein as "the first action"), and considerable proof was taken. But, before it was completed, and of course before judgment in that action, the same plaintiffs in the same court on March 30, 1904, filed another action known in this record as action No. 328, and to which we shall hereafter refer as "this action" against A.J. Asher, and in that petition plaintiffs described the same tract of land as was described in the first action, and averred that Asher was committing similar trespasses upon portions of plaintiffs' entire tract, and it prayed for similar relief against him. He answered therein, and denied plaintiffs' ownership of the entire tract claimed by them, and by counterclaim asserted title to definitely described portions of land within the same boundary and set out the title under which he made such claim. Following pleadings made the issues in that case, and considerable proof was taken during the time intervening between the completion of the issues therein and the final submission of and judgment in the first action, which latter was on April 7, 1905.
But before such submission of, and judgment in, the first action, and on June 21, 1904, plaintiffs filed in that (the first) action their amended petition, in which they alleged that A.J. Asher, the sole defendant in this action, had bought out the claim of Hugh Ward in the first action, and that he was claiming to own the same land that Ward had claimed in his answer which he had long since filed therein. But they did not allege in that amendment by which Asher was brought into the action, that he claimed to own any of the land described in plaintiffs' petition except that which was set out in Ward's answer; although the prayer of that pleading of plaintiffs, whereby Asher was brought into the action, asked that he "set up and establish herein any claim he may have to or against the land described in the petition, under purchase from said Ward or otherwise." But so much of that prayer as sought to have adjudicated any other claim of Asher than the one that he purchased from Ward was to that extent broader than and beyond the facts averred in the body of that pleading which was confined to only the claim that Ward had made to the land described in the petition in his (Ward's) original answer. Cases and authorities are abundant to the effect that the prayer for relief cannot be more extensive in its scope than what the facts alleged in the body of the pleading authorize. Coke v. Shanks, 218 Ky. 402, 291 S.W. 362; Crow v. Owensboro & N.R. Co., 82 Ky. 134, and Vila v. Grand Island Electric Light, Ice & Coal Storage Co., 68 Neb. 222, 94 N.W. 136, 97 N.W. 613, 63 L.R.A. 791, 110 Am. St. Rep. 400, 413, 4 Ann. Cas. 59.
On April 4, 1906, which was nearly a year after the judgment in the first action was entered, plaintiffs filed in this one an amended reply which brought on the war to settle which we are now called upon to write a treaty of peace. In it plaintiffs pleaded the judgment rendered in the first action in their favor, and relied on it as an adjudication of the matters involved in this one, and asked that the counterclaim of defendant, Asher, be dismissed, and that they be adjudged all of the land described in their petition, on the ground that the judgment in the first action was conclusive against the defendant in this one. Defendant by supplemental rejoinder responded to that plea, and demurrers were filed to both those pleadings. The judge who was then presiding over the court sustained the demurrer filed by defendant to the amended reply, relying upon the estoppel, and overruled the one filed by plaintiffs to defendant's supplemental rejoinder thereto in avoidance thereof, and the case then followed the example of Rip Van Winkle, and took a long sleep. But on September 21, 1928, when the Bell circuit court, to which the cause had been transferred by agreement, was presided over by another judge, the case was awakened, and that judge set aside the interlocutory rulings on the demurrers referred to, and overruled the one filed to the estoppel plea, and sustained the one to the matters alleged in avoidance thereof, and, defendant declining to plead further, judgment was rendered for plaintiffs in accordance with the prayer of their petition, and to reverse it they prosecute this appeal. The parties stipulate that no other question is presented for determination other than the correctness of the rulings on the pleadings referred to of the last judge who sat in the case and rendered the judgment appealed from.
The doctrine of estoppel by judgment, and usually embraced in the term "res judicata," is of long standing, and is a wholesome and necessary one in the administration of justice, for without it no question properly litigated would ever be settled, even between the parties, and courts would be perpetually harassed in reviewing and rereviewing questions that had been previously adjudicated between parties or their privies. Therefore it is firmly settled in the law that questions and issues once properly adjudicated between parties by a court having jurisdiction of both the subject-matter and of the person, and of the issues so determined, are forever thereafter conclusive between them and their privies. But the necessity for, as well as the usefulness of, the doctrine as built upon such circumscribing facts, does not authorize courts to uphold and apply it when the judgment relied on is not so circumscribed, for to do so would make of it a tool for the accomplishment of fraud and injustice.
The doctrine does not apply (a) to facts that subsequently arise; nor (b) when the court does not have the necessary jurisdiction, as above outlined; nor (c) when the facts or issues determined were only incidental to the relief sought by the pleadings in the case; nor (d) when the relied on judgment was void, and which would mean that the court rendering it was without jurisdiction to do so; nor (e) where the court in rendering the judgment expressly or by necessary implication reserved the determination of the issues to be later litigated, but against the determination of which the...
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