Griswold v. Fuller
| Decision Date | 18 January 1876 |
| Citation | 33 Mich. 268 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | Augustus D. Griswold v. Hernando A. Fuller and others |
Heard January 6, 1876
Appeal in Chancery from Muskegon Circuit.
Decree of dismissal affirmed, with costs.
Eggleston & Kleinhans and Jacob Ferris, for complainant.
E Gould and C. I. Walker, for defendants.
Campbell, J. did not sit in this case.
Complainant claims to own and be in possession of numerous large tracts of land in different counties in this state, and which land he alleges defendants are seeking to subject for debts of the Detroit & Milwaukee Railway Co. as property of the latter, and which proceedings he avers becloud his title and impair his equitable rights.
He deduces his title from a decree of the circuit court for the county of Oakland in chancery, made on the 8th of December, 1863, and entered on the 18th of January, 1864, in a suit brought by Morgan L. Drake against the Detroit & Milwaukee Railway Co. and others, and upon a sale made thereunder by a circuit court commissioner for the county of Oakland, on the 25th of April, 1864, and the order to confirm the same, dated May 7th thereafter.
Whatever, therefore, may be said in regard to other aspects of the case, he cannot have relief unless title to the land was obtained through these proceedings, and if the proceedings were actually defective and invalid on jurisdictional grounds, then no title was obtained.
The defendants urge that there were many such jurisdictional defects, and therefore that the present bill was rightly dismissed by the court below.
The term "want of jurisdiction" is used in equity tribunals in different senses.
Sometimes it is conventionally applied, and means no more than this: that the litigation is not launched in such manner as to make it regular for the court to take cognizance of it, or that the proceedings, although well enough begun, are not so shaped or proceeded in as to make it proper to allow relief, or some particular relief in question; and yet it is well understood that if cognizance of the controversy is taken in the one case, or if the court allows some relief, or the particular relief, in the other, the action had must bind unless set aside in some direct proceeding.
There is no need to mention cases to illustrate this, because they must be familiar to all. But apart from cases within this principle we recognize those cases where the defects or miscarriages are so vital or far reaching that the proceeding is positively bad, and does not require to be formally set aside in order to prevent its having operation as something of lawful force. Every court is in some way limited in its powers. There must be certain conditions on which the right to act depends; and in most cases, certainly, the absence of these necessary conditions must deprive the act, if done, of all legal force. When the act is not merely an error or irregularity in the exercise of jurisdiction, but consists in taking cognizance of a case or proceeding without any power to do so, or in doing something which, on account of the character of the court, the nature of the litigation, the subject matter and the aptitude of the complaint, pleadings or issues, is absolutely beyond its legal sphere of action or authority, or in positive derogation of its competency, or in contravention of the power marked out by law for its course of action, then, however well intended in point of fact, the thing done amounts to usurpation, and cannot possess any binding force.
Now, when we read the record before us, we notice, in the first place, that the decree in Drake's case was pro confesso, and that there is no averment in the present bill, or any proof in the record, that any defendant in Drake's case was subpoenaed or notified in any form, neither does the present bill state that any defendant appeared in that case. But we do not rest on this. We proceed to notice briefly the nature of Drake's complaint touching these lands and his position in court, in order to ascertain the foundation and scope of the court's authority to decree pro confesso.
He claimed to be owner of a judgment for a large sum against the Detroit & Milwaukee Railway Co., and he filed his bill in the circuit court for the county of Oakland in chancery, to obtain collection of it. He alleged the recovery of the judgment by other parties, its transfer to him, and that executions had been issued in Oakland county and returned nulla bona, except as to a small portion.
He made no charge, and there was no pretense, that any of the lands in question had been levied on. He however alleged positively that these lands...
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Horn v. Miller
... ... 466, 23 Wall. 466, 23 L.Ed. 70 ... Boston D. Co. v. Florence Manuf. Co., 114 Mass. 69 ... Whitehead v. Kitson, 119 Mass. 484. Griswold v ... Fuller, 33 Mich. 268. First Nat. Bank v ... Bininger, 26 N.J.Eq. 345. Wolcott v. Robbins, ... 26 Conn. 236. Green v. Spring, 43 Ill. 280 ... ...
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