Hill v. Scotland County

• Decision Date: 05 March 1888
• Citation: 34 F. 208
• Parties: HILL v. SCOTLAND COUNTY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri

34 F. 208

HILL v. SCOTLAND COUNTY.

United States Circuit Court, E.D. Missouri, Northern Division.

March 5, 1888

F. T Hughes, for plaintiff.

H. A Cunningham, for defendant.

THAYER J.

This is a suit on 46 coupons clipped from 40 bonds of a series of 200 bonds of the denomination of $1,000 each, alleged to have been issued by Scotland county to the Missouri, Iowa &amp Nebraska Railroad Company in payment for stock of that corporation subscribed in 1870. By stipulation of counsel the case was submitted on the testimony contained in the printed transcripts of the record of a case between the same parties which was tried some years since by my predecessor, Judge TREAT, at St. Louis, Mo., and is now pending on appeal from his decision in the supreme court of the United States. The answer in this case, as I take it, admits that all the coupons sued upon and filed in this case bear the signature of the county clerk of Scotland county, and were detached from bonds which were signed by the presiding justice of the county court of Scotland county, and that his signature is duly attested by the signature of the county clerk and seal of the county court. There is a plea that the coupons declared upon are not the act or deed of Scotland county, but, taken as a whole, it is clear, I think, that the answer puts in issue, not the genuineness of signatures to the bonds, or the existence of instruments purporting to be bonds of Scotland county, such as are described in the petition, but the power of the various county officials to execute such securities, and thereby bind the county. The authority of the county court to issue the bonds in question, notwithstanding the consolidation of the Alexandria & Bloomfield Railroad with the Iowa Southern Railway, thereby forming the Missouri, Iowa & Nebraska Railroad, and notwithstanding the change of the route of the road, is settled, so far as this court is concerned, by the decision in Scotland Co. v. Thomas, 94 U.S. 682, where these questions are fully considered and determined.

The answer contains a further plea to the effect that the entire issue of bonds by Scotland county, including, of course those from which the coupons in suit were detached, have been adjudged void by the supreme court of the state of Missouri, in the case of Wagner v. Meety, 69 Mo. 150, and that the plaintiff stands in privity with the defendants in that suit, and is bound by the decree therein, not being himself an innocent purchaser of the bonds, and not having derived title thereto by, through, or under an innocent purchaser thereof. This latter defense was mainly relied upon in the case tried before Judge TREAT, and is particularly invoked in the present suit. In the case of Scotland Co. v. Hill, 122 U.S. 185, 5 S.Ct. 93, also in the case of Warren Co. v. Marcy, 97 U.S. 96, it was held that purchasers of commercial paper like that now in suit were not chargeable with constructive notice of the pendency of litigation affecting the title or validity of such securities; that to bind a purchaser of such securities by a decree or judgment in a suit affecting the same to which he was not a party, it must appear that he bought with actual notice of the pending litigation. Following that rule, Judge TREAT held in the former suit between these parties that to...