Fisher v. Stevens Coal Co.

• Decision Date: 13 July 1939
• Docket Number: 6-1939
• Citation: 136 Pa.Super. 394,7 A.2d 573
• Parties: Fisher v. Stevens Coal Company (et al., Appellant)
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

7 A.2d 573

136 Pa.Super. 394

Fisher v. Stevens Coal Company (et al., Appellant)

No. 6-1939

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

July 13, 1939

Argued March 15, 1939.

Appeal from order of C. P. Northumberland Co., Sept. T., 1938, No 413, in case of Isaac Fisher v. Stevens Coal Company.

Interpleader proceeding.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.

Petition and rule of defendant for leave to pay money into court and directing plaintiff and another to interplead, made absolute opinion by Cummings, J. Defendant, in feigned issue appealed.

Error assigned was order making absolute the rule to interplead.

Order reversed.

John L Pipa, with him Roger J. Dever, for appellant.

Charles C. Lark, for appellee.

H. F. Bonno, for appellee.

Before Keller, P. J., Cunningham, Baldrige, Stadtfeld, Parker, Rhodes and Hirt, JJ.

OPINION

Keller, P. J.

This is an appeal by District No. 9, United Mine Workers of America, an unincorporated association, hereinafter called U. M. W. A., from an order of the Court of Common Pleas of Northumberland County, entered on the petition of Stevens Coal Company, directing the said petitioner to pay into court the sum of one dollar, and ordering appellant and Isaac Fisher to interplead and try the issue whether said one dollar so paid into court is the money of Isaac Fisher or of District No. 9, U. M. W. A.

Ordinarily, where a defendant, who has been sued in an action of assumpsit, comes into court and shows that it is a mere stakeholder, having in its hands a fund, to which it asserts no interest, but which is claimed by another person as well as by the plaintiff in the action, and that it is thus exposed to the trouble and expense of defending two actions and the liability of paying out the fund twice, the court will order the claimants to interplead and permit the petitioning stakeholder to pay the fund into court, and on payment of the same and of the costs to that point, will relieve the stakeholder from further liability to either of the claimants; and from such an order an appeal usually will not lie, for, in such circumstances, it is interlocutory and the rights of the contending claimants are simply transferred from the stakeholder to the fund in court, and are not otherwise affected.

But where the petition for interpleader shows on its face that the petitioner is not a mere stakeholder, but has an interest in the controversy, or has taken some action recognizing the claim of one of the parties as valid, as over against the other, or has incurred a personal liability to either claimant or to both claimants, or has taken any other position that is inconsistent with that of an impartial stakeholder, so that the order of the court directing the money to be paid into court and the claimants to interplead with reference thereto will affect the substantive right of recovery which either of the parties claimant may have against the petitioner as a debtor growing out of a contractual obligation between them, -- or where this fact otherwise clearly appears on the rule granted on the petition --, the order of the court in such event is not interlocutory but is definitive and determinative of substantive rights and is therefore appealable. This case, in our opinion, comes within the latter category.

Interpleader is a remedial proceeding devised and exercised by courts of equity to avoid the risk of loss ensuing from the demands in separate suits of rival claimants to the same debt or legal duty.

An excellent review of the subject is contained in the opinion of Mr. Justice Stone in State of Texas v. State of Florida et al., 306 U.S. 398, 83 L.Ed. 817, 59 S.Ct. 563 (filed March 13, 1939) from which we quote, in part, the following, leaving out the citations, which may be referred to in the opinion: "Since, without the interposition of equity, each claimant in pursuing his remedy in an independent suit might succeed and thus subject the debtor or the fund pursued to multiple liability, equity gave a remedy by way of bill of interpleader, upon the prosecution of which it required the rival claimants to litigate in a single suit their ownership of the asserted claim. A plaintiff [that is, the complainant in the bill in equity] need not await actual institution of independent suits; it is enough if he shows that conflicting claims are asserted and that the consequent risk of loss is substantial. . . . . The peculiarity of the strict bill of interpleader was that the plaintiff asserted no interest in the debt or fund, the amount of which he placed at the disposal of the court and asked that the rival claimants be required to settle in the equity suit the ownership of the claim among themselves."

In the early days of this Commonwealth, both as a colony and as a State, no provision was made for separate courts of equity, but with a wisdom far in advance of the times, our judges administered equitable principles, which the settlers brought with them as a part of our common law, (McMunn v. Carothers, 4 Clark 354, 355 -- Lowrie, J., 8 Standard Penna. Practice, sec. 2, p. 14), under common law forms, and used a writ of scire facias or motion and rule as a substitute for formal bill and equity process in administering equitable relief.

In this way the equitable remedy of interpleader was early made available in this Commonwealth in common law actions by scire facias or motion and rule. See Coates v. Roberts, 4 Rawle 100, 108, 109 (1833); McMunn v. Carothers, 4 Clark 354; Brownfield v. Canon, 25 Pa. 299, 301. In McMunn v. Carothers, supra, Judge Lowrie, then a judge of the District Court of Allegheny County, afterwards a justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court, said: "The principles of equity being part of our common law, our interpleader is no less expansive in its principles than the equity process." And in Brownfield v. Canon, supra (1855), the same judge referred to "The old common law process of interpleader," and said (p. 301): "The principles of interpleading, and the cases in which it may be applied, are best exemplified in the practice in equity; but the form of procedure in a common law case is very simple, and requires but little modification."

In 1836 (Act of March 11, 1836, P. L. 76), the General Assembly in a supplement to the Act establishing the District Court for the City and County of Philadelphia (Act of March 28, 1835, P. L. 88), provided in section 4 that "The defendant in any action which shall be brought in the said court for the recovery of money, or of any goods or chattels, or the value thereof in damages, which shall have come lawfully to his hands or possession, may, at any time after declaration filed and before plea pleaded by a suggestion to be filed of record, disclaim all interest in the subject matter of such action, and offer to bring the same into court, or to pay or dispose thereof as the court shall order, and if he shall also allege under oath or affirmation, that the right thereto is claimed by, or supposed to belong to some person not party to the action, (naming him or them,) who has sued or is expected to sue for the same, or shall shew some probable matter to the court to believe that such suggestion is true, the said court may, thereupon, order the plaintiff to interplead with such third person, and make such rules and orders in the cause, and issue such process for the purpose of making such third person party to the action, and for carrying such proceeding to interplead into full and complete effect, and may render such judgment or judgments thereon, as shall be agreeable to the rules and practices of the law in like cases." (Italics supplied).

This act was modeled after the English Act of 1 and 2 William IV, c. 58, sec. 1, which extended to the English courts of law the remedy by interpleader that our Pennsylvania courts of common pleas had long enjoyed, but which, except for a proceeding in actions of detinue, Russell v. Church, 65 Pa. 9, 15, (Sharswood, J.) was there available only by bill in equity.

The Act of March 11, 1836, supra, was afterwards extended to the courts of common pleas of several other counties, (Berks and Schuylkill), by the Act of March 27, 1848, P. L. 265; but this was probably due to a misconception as to the necessity for such an act for the courts of common pleas. The Act of March 11, 1836, supra, merely conferred on the newly created district court the same right to require two claimants to interplead, as respects their claims against a fund or property in the hands of a third person, who disclaimed all interest in the subject matter in dispute, that, by the common law of the Commonwealth, courts of common pleas had long enjoyed and possessed: Clarke & Cohen v. Real, 105 Pa.Super. 102, 109, 159 A. 454; 15 R. C. L. 221. When, therefore, reference is made in the decisions (e. g., McKinley, v. Mutual Life Ins. Co., 278 Pa. 300, 304, 123 A. 304; Taylor v. Paul, 6 Pa.Super. 496, 499; Pennypacker's Appeal, 57 Pa. 114, 118; Orhowski v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 125 Pa.Super. 121, 123, 189 A. 752) to interpleader at or under the common law, the reference is not to the common law of England, but to the common law of Pennsylvania.

The same year, (1836), the General Assembly, by the Act of June 16, 1836, P. L. 784, in section 13, conferred on the Supreme Court "when sitting in banc in the City of Philadelphia and the court of common pleas for the said city and county," the power and jurisdiction of courts of chancery so far as related to, inter alia. "IV. The determination of rights to property or money claimed by two or more persons, in the hands or possession of a person claiming no right of property therein." By the Act of February 14, 1857, P. L. 39, the chancery powers and jurisdictions...