City of Dallas v. Brown

• Decision Date: 24 October 1962
• Docket Number: No. 16193,16193
• Citation: 362 S.W.2d 372
• Parties: CITY OF DALLAS et al., Petitioners, v. Daniel C. BROWN et al., Respondents.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 372

362 S.W.2d 372

CITY OF DALLAS et al., Petitioners, v. Daniel C. BROWN et al., Respondents.

No. 16193.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas, Dallas.

Oct. 24, 1962.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 23, 1962.

H. P. Kucera, City Atty., N. Alex Bickley, Asst. City Atty., Dallas, Will Wilson, Atty. Gen., Austin, McCall, Parkhurst, Crowe, McCall & Horton, Ritchie, Ritchie & Crosland, and Carrington, Johnson & Stephens, Dallas, for petitioners.

James P. Donovan, Dallas, pro se and for respondents.

DIXON, Chief Justice.

City of Dallas, together with certain of its officials and other interested parties, Petitioners, seeks a writ of prohibition and ancillary orders against James P. Donovan and about 200 of his clients, Respondents, to prohibit Respondents from further prosecuting Civil Action No. 9276, styled Brown, et al. v. City of Dallas et al., Now pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.

Petitioners allege that the issues which Respondents present in their suit in the United States District Court are the same issues involving the same subject matter that have been previously adjudicated by this Court in the case of Atkinson et al. v. City of Dallas, Tex.Civ.App., 353 S.W.2d 275; and that the writ of prohibition is necessary to protect the previous judgment of this Court and its enforcement and execution.

The record discloses events leading up to or connected with Petitioners' application as follows:

1. On April 3, 1961 George S. Atkinson and others, owners of property near Love Field, a municipal airport located in the City of Dallas filed a class suit in the District Court of the State of Texas to restrain the City of Dallas from the construction of a runway at the airport. The suit also attacked the validity of certain revenue bonds which the City was about to issue to finance construction of the runway.

2. On July 17, 1961 a summary judgment was rendered in favor of the City denying the permanent injunction sought by the Plaintiffs.

3. On December 15, 1961 this Court on the appeal of the case, affirmed the above summary judgment. Motion for rehearing was overruled on January 19, 1962. A detailed statement of the points urged on the appeal will be found in 353 S.W.2d 275.

4. On March 14, 1962 the Supreme Court of Texas denied a writ of error the case with the notation 'no reversible error', and announced that a motion for rehearing would not be entertained.

5. On June, 25, 1962 the Supreme Court of the United States denied a writ of certiorari in the case, Atkinson v. City of Dallas, 370 U.S. 939, 82 S.Ct. 1587, 8 L.Ed.2d 808, and on October 8, 1962, 83 S.Ct. 18 overruled a motion for rehearing. Thus the judgment of this Court of December 15, 1961 affirming the summary judgment of the trial court became final for all purposes, and the issues decided in our judgment of affirmance became res judicata.

6. On September 24, 1962 Respondents herein filed Civil Action No. 9276, styled Brown et al. v. City of Dallas et al., in the United States District Court. By this suit they seek a permanent injunction against the City, to restrain the City from building the runway and from issuing certain revenue bonds. They do not seek a temporary injunction, and none has been granted. Thirty of the plaintiffs in the United States District Court are the same persons who were plaintiff in the original suit filed April 3, 1961 in a District Court of Dallas County. Other plaintiffs, all alleged to be property owners, were added in the United States District Court.

7. On October 2, 1962 the City of Dallas filed the application for writ of prohibition which is now before us for decision. The City asserts that the suit in the United States District Court is merely an attempt to relitigate the issues which were adjudicated in our judgment of affirmance of December 15, 1961.

8. On October 6, 1962 Respondents filed an application in the United States District Court seeking to enjoin this Court from further considering or acting on the City's application for a writ of prohibition.

9. On October 10, 1962 the United States District Court dismissed Respondents' application for injunction to restrain this Court from further considering the City's application for a writ of prohibition.

Are the issues raised in the Civil Action No. 9276, styled Brown et al. v. City of Dallas et al. filed September 24, 1962 in the United States District Court the same as the issues adjudicated in our judgment of affirmance of December 15, 1961, which judgment became final when the Supreme Court of the United States on October 8, 1962 overruled a motion for rehearing? Petitioners contend that the issues are the same. Respondents contend that they are not the same.

After a careful consideration of the whole record a majority of our Court have concluded that it is not necessary for us to answer the above question in order to decide whether to grant or refuse the writ of prohibition sought by Petitioners. For it is our opinion that regardless of whether the issues are the same, there are other considerations which should and do cause us to decide that the writ ought to be refused.

Under Art. 1823, Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. we are given authority to issue writs of mandamus and other writs only when necessary to protect our jurisdiction. State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Worley, Tex.Civ.App., 346 S.W.2d 407, 409. The pendency of Action No. 9276 in the United States District Court does not invade our exclusive jurisdiction, though the issues in the suit may be the same as the issues decided in our judgment of affirmance. Ours is not the only Court which has jurisdiction to enforce a plea of res judicata in support of our judgment of affirmance of December 15, 1961. That defense may be and has been pled by the City in Action 9276 in the United States District Court, and that Court has jurisdiction to hear and give effect to the plea.

Petitioners contend in effect our jurisdiction is invaded because Respondents have filed a suit in another Court in which Respondents try to ignore the finality of our judgment. And Petitioners further contend that the only way our jurisdiction can be protected and respected is by the issuance of a writ of prohibition restraining the litigants from further prosecuting their suit in the other Court where it is now pending. We do not agree to such contention. To agree would be equivalent to hold that the conclusiveness of a judgment could never be determined except by the Court that rendered it.

In a situation similar in most respects to the situation now before us our Supreme Court took note of the difference between an invasion of a court's jurisdiction and the mere filing of a suit in disregard of a prior judgment. We quote from the opinion by Justice Nelson Phillips in Milam County Oil Mill Co. v. Bass, 106 Tex. 260, 163 S.W. 577:

'* * * to disregard a judgment through the institution of a suit is not necessarily to obstruct its operation. True it may draw the judgment into question through the denial of its effect, and the judgment may be so conclusive as to render the suit a groundless one; but the jurisdiction of the court is not invaded by the mere assertion of rights through such method, even in contravention of the judgment, so long as its operation is left unimpeded. If a court should entertain such a suit, and through want of jurisdiction or failure to accord to the judgment its legal effect render an erroneous decree, the remedy provided by our system for its revision and the readjudication, if needs be, of the conclusiveness of the judgment, is an appeal. (emphasis ours)

'We are not insensible to the hardship that such cases may sometimes impose, nor to the forcible argument of the able counsel for relators that litigation in relation to this estate, so prolonged as its history discloses, should end; but such considerations afford in themselves no ground for the closing of the doors of the courts to suits, however ill founded, brought in evident good faith. * * *

'The power of a court to enforce its jurisdiction does not include an authority to prevent the prosecution of any suit to which a judgment of the court may be an effectual bar, but which, beyond presenting an issue as to the conclusiveness of the judgment upon the asserted cause of action, makes no attempt to disturb it, or to interfere with its execution or the exercise of rights established by it, as such a suit does not conflict with the exercise of that...