Bolden v. Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co.

Decision Date18 June 1925
Docket Number6 Div. 407
PartiesBOLDEN et al. v. SLOSS-SHEFFIELD STEEL & IRON CO.
CourtAlabama Supreme Court

Rehearing Denied Jan. 28, 1926

Further Rehearing Denied Dec. 9, 1926

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; W.M. Walker, Judge.

Bill in equity by the Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Company against Mary Belle Bolden, alias Hughley, and S.R. Hartley. From a judgment overruling a demurrer to the bill, defendants appeal. Affirmed.

Somerville Gardner, and Thomas, JJ., dissenting.

S.R Hartley and E.M. Thomas, both of Birmingham, for appellants.

Bradley Baldwin, All & White, William M. Rogers, A. Key Foster, and W.W. Kennedy, all of Birmingham, for appellee.

BOULDIN J.

The bill is to enjoin a judgment at law for fraud in its procurement. The appeal is from a decree overruling demurrers to the bill.

The case made by the bill and exhibits is in substance this:

John Hughley, an employee of complainant, was killed by accident under conditions entitling a lawful wife, as a legal dependent, to compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Law (Laws 1919, p. 206). Thereafter the respondent "Mary Belle Bolden, alias Mary Belle Hughley," filed her petition in the circuit court claiming compensation as the dependent wife of the deceased employee. On the hearing the petitioner and a witness for her testified in open court that she was lawfully married to the deceased about six years prior to his death and was living with him as his wife at the time of his death. Thereupon a judgment was rendered against complainant awarding compensation. About six months after this judgment was rendered complainant discovered it had been procured by fraud and misrepresentation in that petitioner was never married to the deceased and was not living with him at the time of his death, and the testimony to these facts was false and fraudulent. It is averred the testimony was not known to complainant to be false at the time of the trial, and that due diligence was used to ascertain all the facts pertaining thereto. The exhibit shows the proceeding for compensation was in the name of "Mary Belle Hughley."

The equity of the bill is challenged by general demurrer, and by special grounds setting up that the fraud alleged is perjury or false swearing; that it is not fraud in the act of obtaining the judgment, or in its concoction; that it is not extrinsic or collateral to the matter which was tried and determined by the judgment in question.

Under the averments of the bill, taken as true on demurrer, the very existence of the cause of action was simulated, a mere concoction conceived with malus animus, and supported by perjury. Money so obtained, without the aid of a court, as the unwitting instrument of fraud, would be money obtained under false pretenses, denounced as a felony in Alabama. In moral obliquity it is analogous to obtaining money by falsely personating another with intent to defraud, made a felony by section 4136, Code of 1923. Again it is analogous in principle to falsely personate another in judicial proceedings whereby the person so personated may become liable for a sum of money. Code 1923, § 4154 . In the one case the person so personated is defrauded by the imposition of a burden, maybe in the interest of a third person; while in the other the fruits of the fraud inure to him who is guilty thereof. The fraud here set up was "in the procurement of the judgment itself"; fraud "practiced in the act of obtaining judgment." It was fraud in simulating and setting up in the suit a relationship to deceased going to the jurisdiction of the court. The court's jurisdiction was invoked by fraud. In such case there is a fraud on the court as well as the opposing party. The case is different from one of antecedent fraud entering into the transaction giving rise to the suit. In the latter case the question of fraud vel non is an issue between the parties--is "intrinsic," as that term is used in the authorities.

Perjury or false swearing in the course of litigation is not per se a ground of equitable interference with judgments at law. One reason of the rule is that ordinarily the opposing party has knowledge of the falsity of the testimony, or has reason to expect any testimony which will prove the case of his adversary. The truth of the case is the very issue to be determined in the trial at law. The more insistent reason is that it would tend to throw into the court of equity all cases where an issue of veracity has arisen in the trial at law, burden the equity court with the retrial of issues which were or should have been settled at law, and impair the dignity and binding force of judgments of courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction. It is well said that injustice is better tolerated in an occasional case than the general injustice, uncertainty, delay, and expense which would otherwise result.

But where the jurisdiction of the court of law is acquired by the fraudulent concoction of a simulated cause of action, the fraud itself to be consummated through the instrumentality of a court of justice, the protection of the court demands that there should be a remedy. We can conceive of no worse reflection upon a judicial system, no lowering of its dignity and of the respect due to its findings more regrettable than that the tribunal of justice may become an impotent agency of fraud against those who look to it for protection and who are free from fault or neglect in the premises. A court of equity becomes the friend of the court of law in relieving against such results. That the fraudulent scheme contemplated perjury and was consummated thereby does not lessen the call to the jurisdiction of a court of equity.

Such, we think, is the case alleged in the present bill, and that it is not subject to the grounds of demurrer assigned thereto. In our view, this is the effect of our decisions wherein this court has frequently defined the equity jurisdiction, with full review of authorities. We here cite these cases without again reviewing and restating their holdings: Keenum v. Dodson, 212 Ala. 146, 102 So. 230; Hardeman v. Donaghey, 170 Ala. 362, 367, 369, 54 So. 172; Noble v. Moses, 74 Ala. 616; Cromelin v. McCauley, 67 Ala. 542; Edmondson v. Jones, 204 Ala. 134, 85 So. 799; Sims v. Riggins, 201 Ala. 99, 105, 106, 77 So. 393; De Sota Coal Min. & Dev. Co. v. Hill, 194 Ala. 537, 69 So. 948; Id., 188 Ala. 667, 65 So. 988; Danne v. Stroecker, 210 Ala. 483, 98 So. 479; Harris v. Harris, 208 Ala. 20, 93 So. 841; Evans v. Wilhite, 167 Ala. 587, 52 So. 845; Nixon v. Clear Creek Co., 150 Ala. 604, 43 So. 805, 9 L.R.A. (N.S.) 1255; McDonald v. Pearson, 114 Ala. 630, 21 So. 534; Watts v. Frazer, 80 Ala. 186; Hall v. Pegram, 85 Ala. 522, 5 So. 209, 6 So. 612; Humphries v. Burleson, 72 Ala. 1; Alder v. Van Kirk L. & C. Co., 114 Ala. 551, 21 So. 490, 62 Am.St.Rep. 133; United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U.S. 61, 25 L.Ed. 93; United States v. Beebe, 180 U.S. 343, 21 S.Ct. 371, 45 L.Ed. 563; Marshall v. Holmes, 141 U.S. 589, 12 S.Ct. 62, 35 L.Ed. 870; Marine Ins. Co. v. Hodgson, 7 Cranch (11 U.S.) 332, 3 L.Ed. 362; Greenleaf v. Maher, Fed.Cas. No. 5,780, 2 Wash. C.C. (Pa.) 393; 6 Pom.Eq.Jur. p. 1092; 2 Story Eq.Jur. § 1575; Freeman on Judgments, § 489; 34 C.J. p. 473, note 80; 1 Black on Judgments, §§ 369, 370; note 54 Am.St.Rep. 227.

Affirmed.

ANDERSON, C.J., and SAYRE, THOMAS, and MILLER, JJ., concur.

SOMERVILLE J. (dissenting).

The bill of complaint in this case shows that the respondent, Mary Belle Bolden, alias Hughley, "filed a petition against your complainant in the circuit court of Jefferson county, Ala., claiming compensation as a dependent wife of the said John Hughley, deceased," and that the trial court found that she was his wife and awarded compensation accordingly.

The fraud upon which complainant relies in invoking the jurisdiction of equity for the impeachment and cancellation of the judgment at law, is thus stated in the bill:

"(6) That shortly prior to the filing of this bill and more than six months after the entry of the aforesaid order or decree, your complainant discovered that the aforesaid order or decree had been procured by fraud and misrepresentation on the part of said Mary Belle Bolden, alias, *** which said fraud or misrepresentation consisted in this: That the said Mary Belle Bolden, alias, *** and a witness, Elizabeth Caster, who testified in said cause on behalf of the plaintiff, testified in open court on the trial of the aforesaid cause that the said Mary Belle Bolden, alias, *** was legally married to the said John Hughley, deceased, about six years prior to his death, and that at the time of the death of the said John Hughley, deceased, the said Mary Belle Bolden, alias, *** was living with him as his wife. And your complainant further avers that the said testimony of Mary Belle Bolden, alias, *** and the said Elizabeth Caster, was false, and that the said Mary Belle Bolden, alias, *** was never married to the said John Hughley, deceased, and was not living with him as his wife at the time of his death."

No other fraud is charged or suggested.

Though not material to the conclusions to be hereafter stated, I call attention, in passing, to the fact that the bill does not charge that the testimony complained of was perjured testimony--that is, that it was knowingly and corruptly false. Green v. State, 41 Ala. 419; State v. Lea, 3 Ala. 602.

The majority opinion concedes that the fraud expressly charged in the bill, the use of false, or even of perjured, testimony, is not a ground for equitable relief against the judgment--a principle of practically universal recognition. United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U.S. 61, 25 L.Ed. 93; De Sota, etc., Co. v. Hill, 194 Ala. 537, 69 So. 948.

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    • United States
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    ...those who look to it for protection and who are free from fault or neglect in the premises. . . . ' Bolden v. Sloss-Sheffield, etc., 215 Ala. 334, 335, 110 So. 574, 575 (1925). The majority opinion in Bolden met with a vigorous three-justice dissent, but the difference was chiefly as to the......
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