Bullion, Beck & Champion Mining Co. v. Eureka Hill Mining Co.

• Decision Date: 03 July 1886
• Citation: 5 Utah 3,11 P. 515
• Court: Utah Supreme Court
• Parties: THE BULLION, BECK AND CHAMPION MINING COMPANY, APPELLANT, v. THE EUREKA HILL MINING COMPANY, JOHN Q. PACKARD AND JOHN McCHRYSTAL, RESPONDENTS

11 P. 515

5 Utah 3

THE BULLION, BECK AND CHAMPION MINING COMPANY, APPELLANT, v. THE EUREKA HILL MINING COMPANY, JOHN Q. PACKARD AND JOHN McCHRYSTAL, RESPONDENTS

Supreme Court of Utah

July 3, 1886

APPEAL from a judgment of the district court of the first district and from an order refusing a new trial. The opinion states the facts.

Reversed.

Mr Arthur Brown and Messrs. Sutherland & McBride (Mr. P. H Emerson, Mr. E. B. Critchlow, Messrs. Sutherland & Son, and Mr. W. N. Dusenberry, were with them on the brief), for the appellant.

I. The cross-complaint does not state a case within the statute relating to such complaints: Laws 1884, p. 207, sec. 305.

The plaintiff's action is trespass for damages, and for an injunction to prevent a continuance of the wrong. The complaint charges that the defendants tortiously entered upon and extracted ore from the Bullion Mining Claim, the property of the plaintiff, which is described by metes and bounds.

The defendant company, on the cross-complaint, alleges ownership and possession of the Eureka Mining Claim, which is also in that pleading described by metes and bounds. It alleges that the plaintiff has set up an adverse claim to the north 700 feet of the lode, which is a part of it. The prayer is that the adverse claim be declared void and its title quieted.

Our contention is that these causes of action have no relation to each other.

1. The relief sought by the cross-complaint does not relate to or depend on the "transaction" upon which the plaintiff's action was brought.

That transaction was the alleged act of defendant in taking ore from the Bullion lode; the word transaction is used in the statute in its ordinary and popular sense: Brewin v Short, 5 El. and Bl., 235; Xenia Bank v. Lee, 7 Abb. Pr., 372; Richie v. Hayward, 71 Mo. 560.

It is impossible to even conjecture any relation between the plaintiff's cause and the defendant's cross-cause of action on the point of the transaction other than that of retaliation; that the defendant committed waste on the plaintiff's lode, because the plaintiff set up an adverse claim to the defendant's lode. That relation will not sustain the cross-complaint: Barhyte v. Hughes, 33 Barb., 320; McDougall v. Maguire, 35 Cal. 274.

2. The cross-complaint does not purport to affect the "property" to which the plaintiff's action relates.

That action relates to the property on which the alleged trespass was committed, and to the premises in respect to which the plaintiff asked and obtained protection by injunction.

The relief pleaded for by the defendant in its cross-complaint would, if granted, only quiet the defendant's title to and possession of a distinct non-conflicting adjoining parcel. The facts stated in the two complaints are not inconsistent or contradictory. Each party might obtain the full relief asked for, and execute its decree; and the execution of neither would detract at all from the benefit of the other's recovery. The plaintiff's complaint charges a wrong done by defendants to one parcel, and the defendant company complains of a wrong done by plaintiff to another.

A cross-complaint being permitted only where the affirmative relief has the connection just discussed with the principal case, it is required to be defensive to the plaintiff's action, though it may ask further aid of the court: Dietrich v. Koch, 35 Wis. 618; Leavenworth v. Packer, 52 Barb., 132; Pattison v. Richards, 22 Id., 143; Vassar v. Livingston, 13 N.Y. 248; National F. Ins. Co. v. McKay, 21 Id., 19; Stanley v. N.W. Life Ins. Co., 95 Ind. 262; Mattoon v. Baker, 24 How. Pr., 329; Cross v. De Valle, 1 Wall., 14; Daniel v. Morrisons Ex., 6 Dana, 186; Field v. Schiefflin, 7 John. Ch., 250; Royse v. Reynolds, 10. Bush, 286.

This required relation is wanting; the cross-complaint alleges no defensive matter, nor does it seek affirmative relief relative to the Bullion claim or its vein.

The cross-complaint does not state a good, equitable cause of action.

The plaintiff, being in possession of the Bullion claim, brings trespass for the defendant's intrusion upon the lode therein, and obtains a provisional injunction to prevent a continuance of the wrong. The defendant, being in possession of the Eureka claim, where the defendant alleges it has a prior location on a part of the apex, claims to have possession of the entire lode, extending westward, so as to include all the ore-bearing ground in the Bullion; it charges the plaintiff with setting up an adverse claim to the Bullion part of the lode which it occupies; it denounces the plaintiff's working of the ore bodies there found as waste. On this statement, as the court construed it, the defendant asks to have its title to the Bullion part of the Eureka lode quieted, and the waste compensated and stopped. The plaintiff seeks damages for defendant's waste committed, and repose and security as to the remainder of the ground by injunction made perpetual. The defendant seeks repose and security by a quieted title, and damages for waste committed, by an accounting.

Had the plaintiff's action of trespass been tried, the defendant would have justified according to its answer. If the findings in this case are true, the works of defendant, stated in the fifth finding, would have been proved. To establish a justification, the defendant would have urged its title to the whole breadth of the lode, extending into the plaintiff's claim to the blue line. Instructions to the jury, in accordance with the conclusions of law in this case, would have made the justification successful. But if the whole ore ground claimed by defendant under the surface of the Bullion was not subject to the principles applied to the particular ground where the alleged trespass was committed, if any part of that ore ground was so situated as to belong to the plaintiff, as part of the Bullion, the plaintiff would be entitled to have it protected under the complaint. A judgment on a trial of that case, whether for the plaintiff or defendant, would affect the whole subject of the cross-complaint as it was construed in the court below. Such a judgment, unreversed, would be res judicata to the same extent, and equally as effectual for relief, as would be a decree in the cross-suit; therefore our claim is:

1. The cross-suit was unnecessary.

A legal action affords an adequate remedy for the determination of legal rights. Courts of common law have and exercise a jurisdiction for the restitution of specific property claimed under legal title, and for the ascertainment of damages for the infraction of legal rights. In such cases, the legal remedy is adequate: 1 Story's Eq., section 616.

Equity does not interfere in those cases, except under well defined conditions, which show such cases to be exceptional on account of circumstances which prevent a resort to the usual common law actions. Replevin and ejectment are perfect means for the recovery of specific property by the legal owner; so are trespass and case for damages, whenever any legal right has been tortiously invaded. These legal remedies are adequate to both parties. A judgment in favor of a defendant fully protects him, according to the nature of his defense. If he did not do the act charged, a simple acquittal gives him all the assurance he needs that he will not again be vexed with the false clamor. If he justifies under title, a judgment in his favor conclusively establishes it so far as the plaintiff is concerned.

The adequacy of the legal remedy cannot be questioned merely because the judgment protects the parties only by way of estoppel: Comstock v. Hanneberry, 66 Ill. 212; Doyle v. Franklin, 40 Cal. 106, 116; Wilson v. Madison, 55 Id., 5; Marshal v. Shaftter, 32 Id., 176; Pennoyer v. Allen, 51 Wis. 360; Gray v. Tyler, 40 Id., 579; Moyle v. Porter, 51 Cal. 639.

If it were otherwise, a defendant in all cases, whether sued at law or in equity, might sustain a cross-complaint in order to have an affirmative judgment.

The defendant could obtain all the relief to which it was entitled to the extent of its pretensions, by answer to the plaintiff's complaint. By a successful defense, on an issue of title, the defendant would have an adequate remedy.

A judgment upon the merits of a cause in litigation, rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction, is a bar to all further prosecution of the same claim or demand: Cromwell v. Sac, 94 U.S. 351; Demorest v. Darg, 32 N.Y. 281; Bigelow on Estoppel, 37.

The bar will be available in any new case between the same parties or their privies, involving the same title, and depending on the same questions: Aurora City v. West, 7 Wall., 96; Doty v. Brown, 4 N.Y. 71; Miller v. Maurice, 6 Hill, 114.

A judgment in an action of trespass may decide conclusively a question of title: Page v. Kennan, 38 Wis. 320; Aurora City v. West, supra; Outram v. Morewood, 3 East, 346; Burt v. Sternburgh, 4 Cowen, 559; Comstock v. Hennebery, 66 Ill. 212.

In Arnold v. Arnold, 17 Pick, 9, the court says: "In every action the verdict is conclusive as to the subject matter of the suit, and any matter particularly put in issue, and found by the jury; and it will not be competent for a party in any other action to deny or plead anything to the contrary of what has been so found and adjudicated. Thus, if the demandant, in a writ of entry, has a judgment against him by the tenant, in a writ of trespass quare clausum fregit, upon an issue of soil and freehold, he cannot be permitted to say that at the time when the action of trespass was commenced the soil and freehold was not in the tenant."

It is an undeniable proposition, that, whatever the form of action if the plaintiff or actor, must prove title to land, in order to recover, title is so in issue that if the plaintiff...