Bostwick v. Baldwin Drainage Dist., 10462.

• Decision Date: 03 May 1943
• Docket Number: No. 10462.,10462.
• Parties: BOSTWICK et al. v. BALDWIN DRAINAGE DIST. et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

133 F.2d 1 (1943)

BOSTWICK et al. v. BALDWIN DRAINAGE DIST. et al.

No. 10462.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

January 22, 1943.

Rehearing Denied February 12, 1943.

Writ of Certiorari Denied May 3, 1943.

Thos. B. Adams, of Jacksonville, Fla., for appellants.

Giles J. Patterson, J. W. Harrell, and J. Henry Blount, all of Jacksonville, Fla., H. S. Phillips, U. S. Atty., of Tampa, Fla., and Damon G. Yerkes, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Jacksonville, Fla., Norman M. Littell, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Washington, D. C., and William D. Jones, Jr., and W. Joe Sears, Jr., Sp. Assts. to the Atty. Gen., both of Jacksonville, Fla., for appellees.

Before SIBLEY, HUTCHESON, and McCORD, Circuit Judges.

Writ of Certiorari Denied May 3, 1943. See 63 S.Ct. 1030, 87 L.Ed. ___.

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

What is in question here is whether appellants by their answer have presented facts which, if established, impeach the title of the Baldwin Drainage District to certain tracts or parcels of land involved, and the awards entered, in a condemnation proceeding brought by the United States for the establishment of an auxiliary air field. The question comes up in this way. The government, in an amendment to its petition for the condemnation of forty-two parcels of land, set up that among other adverse claims to various of the parcels, Nellie C. Bostwick and Baldwin Drainage District claim adversely to each other, parcel four, and the District and Jacksonville Heights Improvement Company claim adversely to each other, five, fifteen and twenty-four, and prayed that they be required to assert their claims. The District, Bostwick and the Improvement Company answered. The District in a brief answer claimed paramount title to and tax liens against all the parcels. Bostwick as to parcel four and the Improvement Co., as to Five, Fifteen and Twenty-four, filed a voluminous answer running with the exhibits to nearly 200 pages, in which, setting out their claims of title, they made a collateral attack upon the federal tax foreclosure suits,¹ the decrees in, and the masters' deeds under, which are the basis of the District's claim of title, as void for want of jurisdiction, and the tax liens asserted in them as invalid for various vices and defects which the answer undertook to point out. There was a prayer that the foreclosure decrees be declared void, the masters' deeds thereto vacated and the title restored to what it was before the decrees were entered. The District, insisting that the answer constituted a collateral attack upon judgments and proceedings of the federal court, moved to strike it, and in addition alleging that the claims of title asserted adversely to those decrees by the defendants, Bostwick and Improvement Company, were attacks upon the jurisdiction and orders of the federal court, sought an injunction to prevent them from further prosecuting their claims. All parties consenting, the determination of the questions presented by the answer and the motions was deferred until the condemnation was had and the awards were made. The condemnation proceeded, the various parcels were condemned and the awards were made as to them. Thereafter, the motions, of the District, to strike defendants' answer and for an injunction, coming on to be heard were treated by the court as motions for judgment on the pleadings and the records in the federal tax foreclosure cases, it being agreed that these records should be regarded as before the court and the court should take judicial knowledge of them. Counsel for the defendants Bostwick and the Improvement Company, conceding that unless those two foreclosure decrees were subject to attack as entered without jurisdiction or by reason of the other matters of fact and law alleged in their answers, the title to the lands in controversy was vested in the District subject to tax claims not important here, the court found and adjudged; that the record in the two foreclosure suits showed that the federal court had jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject matter; that this being so, nothing alleged in the answer entitled defendants to collaterally attack the decrees entered therein; that they were and are binding upon the defendants in those suits and upon all parties claiming from, through or under them; and that the District acquired and held good title under those decrees.

Bostwick and the Improvement Company, appealing, are here with lengthy briefs, aggregating more than 200 pages, challenging these rulings and insisting that, for the multitudinous reasons there set out, the judgment was wrong and may not stand.

Appellees, seeing the matter simply as the district judge did, as a bald effort to collaterally attack the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction in the face of a record which shows that the court had, and adjudged that it had, jurisdiction, have undertaken in a brief of 25 pages to point out the inescapable correctness of the trial court's decision of the one question of law involved in the appeal, whether appellants by their answer sustained their burden of showing that the deeds executed by the masters in the foreclosure suits were void, i. e., were executed pursuant to decrees entered in a cause of which as to parties and subject matter the court was without jurisdiction.

Appellants challenge this approach as an over-simplification of the case they plead. They insist that while they do attack the foreclosure proceedings as wholly void for want of jurisdiction, and the deeds issued under them as wholly ineffective to convey any title, legal or equitable, they also, upon allegations of inequitable conduct in procuring the decrees and the deeds, invoking Marshall v. Holmes, 141 U.S. 589, 12 S.Ct. 62, 35 L.Ed. 870, and similar cases, seek the aid of equity to hold the district as trustee of the legal title for them.

These, as shown by the records in the foreclosure suits, are the controlling facts: On April 10, 1924, one Krietmeyer, alleging himself to be a citizen and resident of the State of Missouri, sued the Baldwin Drainage District, a Florida corporation, in the federal court in Florida; for an accounting to determine the amount due plaintiff and other bond holders; and for a receiver of the district as authorized by Florida statutes to collect unpaid taxes and file suits necessary for that purpose. The claimant alleged that he was a bond holder of the District, that it was in default in the payment of its coupons, that there was a large amount of drainage taxes unpaid, and that the District had not collected and was not taking steps to collect the unpaid taxes. On April 21, 1924, one Brown, a citizen of Kansas, was granted leave to intervene. On April 23, the District answered the complaint. On April 25, the District Judge filed an opinion holding that Krietmeyer was entitled to the relief he sought because of the failure of the District to take the action required by law for the collection of delinquent taxes, and on April 28, 1924, he entered an order appointing Hemphill receiver and adjudging "that this court has, and does now hereby take, jurisdiction of the parties and the subject matter". Hemphill then, under order of the court, instituted, among others, a suit in 1924 against Duval Cattle Company, under whom the District holds title to parcel four, and one in 1929 against Jacksonville Heights Improvement Co., under whom it holds the other parcels, to foreclose the lien of the taxes levied on their lands. The suit against the cattle company was contested on jurisdictional and other grounds, but on December 20, 1928, there was a final decree of foreclosure. An appeal taken from that decree was on June 30, 1930, affirmed by this court and in March, 1931, there was a master's sale to the District, a confirmation by the court, and the property not having been redeemed within the year, a master's deed conveying title. The suit for the foreclosure of tax liens on lands of the Improvement Company was not contested. On October 2, 1930, there was a decree pro confesso followed, on April 27, 1931, by a final decree of foreclosure, on June 1, 1931, by a master's sale, and an order confirming it, and there being no redemption within the year, by a master's deed conveying the property to the district. From the time of the institution of the suit against the Improvement Company in 1929, until its appearance in this condemnation, a period of 13 years, the Improvement Company neither asserted title or claim to the parcels in controversy nor paid or...