Detroit Fire & Marine Insurance Company v. Stewart
| Decision Date | 20 March 1916 |
| Docket Number | 252 |
| Citation | 184 S.W. 438,123 Ark. 42 |
| Parties | DETROIT FIRE & MARINE INSURANCE COMPANY v. STEWART |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Appeal from Miller Circuit Court; Geo. R. Haynie, Judge; affirmed.
Affirmed.
Glass Estes, King & Burford, (of Texas) and J. D. Head, for appellant.
1. The Texas court was a superior court and had complete jurisdiction. 1 Black on Judgments (Ed. 1891), § 286, p 358; 52 Tex. 603; 70 Id. 115; 80 S.W. 872; 149 Id. 1073. The judgment is entitled to full faith and credit and can not be attacked collaterally. Supra; 2 Black on Judg., § 937, p. 1118; 1 Id., § 287, 859, 861 890.
2. Judgments of a sister State are conclusive. 48 Ark. 50.
3. The debt was subject to garnishment in Texas. 115 S.W. 275; 91 Ark. 252; 141 S.W. 595. The matter is res adjudicata and the former judgment is a complete bar. Black on Judg., § 865; 55 Ark. 633.
This is an action instituted on an insurance policy issued by defendant, Detroit Fire & Marine Insurance Company, to recover the amount of damage to the insured property, a dwelling house situated in the State of Texas. The property was owned by Mrs. Kate Mitchell and was insured in her name. Damage was sustained by fire in the sum of $ 97.43, and after the damage occurred Mrs. Mitchell made a written assignment of the claim to Z. C. Stewart, as trustee for herself and her daughter, Alfrey Mitchell. Stewart, as such trustee, instituted this action against the insurance company before a justice of the peace of Miller County, Arkansas, and recovered judgment for the amount of the claim, which was undisputed. The defendant took an appeal to the circuit court and superseded the judgment by the execution of a bond pursuant to the terms of the statute. Craven & Cage, a copartnership, had previously obtained a judgment against Z. C. Stewart individually in an action for debt before a justice of the peace in Harris County, Texas, and while this suit was pending below Cravens & Cage sued out a writ of garnishment on the said judgment and caused the same to be served upon the defendant insurance company. The garnishee answered and upon its motion Stewart and Mrs. Mitchell and Alfrey Mitchell were made parties and summoned by publication of a warning order, no personal service, however being made on said parties, nor is there any evidence that they received any information of the pendency of said garnishment proceeding.
The Texas court rendered a judgment against the garnishee, directing the payment over to Cravens & Cage, the plaintiffs in that suit, of the amount due under the policy, and the defendant has pleaded the judgment in the garnishment proceedings as a bar to recovery in the present action. They pleaded the Texas judgment in this action below, but the trial court refused to sustain the plea and rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiff, Z. C. Stewart, in his representative capacity as trustee under the aforesaid assignment to him. The defendant has prosecuted an appeal to this court.
It is contended on behalf of the defendant that in Texas a justice of the peace exercises jurisdiction as a superior court, and that the judgment in the garnishment proceedings is an adjudication of the right of the plaintiff to recover in the present action. Treating the Texas court as a superior court, with complete jurisdiction over the subject-matter of the garnishment proceedings, we are of the opinion that the record in this case does not show enough to bar the plaintiff from recovering, and that the judgment of the circuit court of Miller County was correct. The garnishment against the defendant operated upon an indebtedness to Z. C. Stewart individually. The writ and the subsequent judgment thereon merely substituted the plaintiffs in that action in the place of Stewart, the defendant in that action, and the only issue in that proceeding concerned the alleged indebtedness of the insurance company to Stewart. It did not involve an issue as to indebtedness of the garnishee to a third person, and Stewart in his representative capacity must be treated as a third person.
"It is a self-evident proposition," says Mr. Shinn, in his work on Attachment and Garnishment, volume II, section...
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