Douglass v. Joyner

• Decision Date: 31 December 1872
• Citation: 60 Tenn. 32
• Parties: R. B. DOUGLASS & CHAS. F. BODDIE v. W. J. JOYNER.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

60 Tenn. 32

R. B. DOUGLASS & CHAS. F. BODDIE

v.W. J. JOYNER.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

December Term, 1872.

FROM SUMNER.

Appeal from the Chancery Court. CHAS. G. SMITH, Chancellor.J. J. TURNER for complainants.

JAMES D. PARK for defendant.

MCFARLAND, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

The Chancellor sustained a demurrer to this bill and amended bill, and from this decree the complainants have appealed.

The bill was filed the 1st of March, 1872, in the Chancery Court at Gallatin. It charges in substance that the defendant, Joyner, who is the Deputy Sheriff of the county, has in his hands an execution against the complainants, issued upon a judgment rendered against them in Chancery Court, at Franklin, for Williamson County, on the 23rd of October, 1871, for $2,314.51 in favor of the defendants, Park and Maney, administrators of Wm. Maney, deceased. The bill charges that this judgment was rendered by motion, without notice to them; that it was founded upon a note for $1,500, dated 5th of April, 1860, payable to one DeGraffenreid, and purporting to have been executed by D. C. Douglass, M. C. Abston, R. B. Douglass, and Wm. Maney as security for the other three. The bill charges that the said Maney, nor his representatives, had ever paid any part of said note, and we are left from this to infer that the judgment was rendered upon the ground that judgment had been rendered against said Wm. Maney, or his representatives upon the note, and upon this the judgment in question was taken by motion against the supposed principals in the note. There is in this record what purports to be a copy of the judgment, but as it was not made a part either of the original or amended bills, upon a demurrer we can not look to it.

The bill charges that in fact neither the complainant, R. B. Douglass, nor Abston, the intestate of the other complainants, ever executed or authorized the execution of the note in their name; that Maney was only the security of his son-in-law, D. C. Douglass, on the note. It is further charged that Abston died in 1860, when administration was granted upon his estate, which has since been fully administered as an insolvent estate in the Chancery Court at Gallatin; that the claim as to his estate is barred by the statute of limitations, and that the judgment in question was taken in violation of the statutory injunction which results from the insolvent proceedings; that the claim was not filed in time for pro rata, and, in fact, was not heard of until the execution came against them.

The first ground of demurrer relied upon is, that the Chancery Court at Gallatin has no jurisdiction to enjoin a decree or judgment of the Chancery Court at Franklin, in another district. For this the cases of Deaderick et al. v. Smith, 6 Hum., 130, and Whitesides v. Wyatt and Latham, 2 Cold., 91, are relied upon.

The first of these was where an injunction had been obtained in the Chancery Court at Murfreesboro against the execution of judgments upon notes executed to the Clerk and Master at Franklin, for the purchase of land sold in the progress of a cause still pending in that court. The latter was an injunction sued out in the Chancery Court at Rutledge, Grainger County, enjoining a judgment rendered upon a note given for the purchase of land sold by decree of the Circuit Court of the same county, upon which, in the progress of the cause, the judgment had been rendered by motion in favor of the Commissioner.

In neither of these causes was it denied, that the facts giving the Court rendering the...