Hooven, Owens & Rentschler Co. v. John Featherstone's Sons

• Decision Date: 23 September 1901
• Docket Number: 1,471.,1,470
• Citation: 111 F. 81
• Parties: HOOVEN, OWENS & RENTSCHLER CO. v. JOHN FEATHERSTONE'S SONS et al. (two cases).
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

111 F. 81

HOOVEN, OWENS & RENTSCHLER CO. v. JOHN FEATHERSTONE'S SONS et al. (two cases).

Nos. 1,470, 1,471.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

September 23, 1901

Syllabus by the Court.

A decision which renders all the questions between the parties served or appearing in the suit res judicata between themselves is a final judgment, and reviewable by appeal in the circuit court of appeals, although the rights of such parties against strangers to the suit, who were named as parties in some of the papers, remain undetermined.

A decree in a suit to enforce a mechanic's lien that a complainant shall take nothing by its action, and that it is entitled to no lien against a certain defendant named, is a final decision reviewable by the sole appeal of the complainant, although another necessary party, who was never served with process, and never appeared in the action, was named in the petition and summons as a defendant.

A general decree that the complainant take nothing by the suit which does not clearly show that it rests upon some matter in abatement which prevents it from barring future actions upon the same cause, cannot be sustained by the sufficiency of the proof of such matter in abatement where there are pleas in bar in the answer, because the legal effect of such a plea is to sustain the latter pleas, and to work a complete estoppel of subsequent suits upon the same cause of action.

Where the court makes a special finding of facts in an action at law, the question whether or not these facts warrant the judgment rendered thereon is always open for consideration by the appellate court on a writ of error without any objection or exception taken at the time of the entry of the judgment.

In cases of doubt a party may take an appeal and sue out a writ of error, and the appellate court will review the proceedings below in accordance with the rules of that method of review applicable to the nature of the case.

A suit to enforce and forclose a mechanic's lien is a suit in equity, and the decree rendered upon it is reviewable by appeal, and not by writ of error.

The methods of review of proceedings in the federal courts fix their power and jurisdiction, and are not affected by the act of conformity, or by the practice or legislation of the states.

One who consents to the hearing in equity of a legal cause of action or to the trial of an equitable cause of action at law is thereby estopped from successfully objecting to the method of trial in an appellate court.

Consent to try a law suit in equity or an equitable cause of action at law constitutes no waiver of the right to review the proceedings by appeal or writ of error, as the nature of the case may demand, and the appellate court will be governed in its action by the rules applicable to the proper method of review.

Statutes giving liens to laborers and material men should be liberally construed, because they cannot recover back their labor or material, and the improvements upon which they are placed are ordinarily enhanced by their value.

Any description which will enable one familiar with the locality to identify the property upon which the lien is intended to be claimed with reasonable certainty is sufficient in a claim for a lien under Rev. St. Mo. 1899, Sec. 4203.

Where one has constructed an improvement consisting of several buildings on adjoining city blocks or lots regardless of the lines, streets, and alleys among them, and has intended to use, and is actually using, the buildings as part of a single plant, so that neither the city lots nor the buildings are adapted to separate uses, all the buildings so constructed may constitute a single improvement, and the tract on which they stand may be a single lot of land, subject to a single lien under the mechanic's lien laws of Missouri (sections 4203, 4204, 4207, Rev. St. 1899).

A claim for a lien for an aggregate amount of materials furnished under contracts between different parties, and mingled together in one account, is void.

A single notice or claim of lien for materials furnished to the same property under different contracts between the same parties is sufficient, and valid.

A claim of a lien for an excessive amount may be sustained pro tanto if the true amount for which the lien is maintainable can be segregated from the aggregate amount claimed.

In a controversy between the claimant of a mechanic's lien and the owner of real estate upon which the property of the lienor has been placed, or between vendor and vendee, or between mortgagor and mortgagee, engines, machinery, houses buildings, and every other thing which is essential to the particular use to which the realty is applied, or between which and the balance of the realty there is a manifest and necessary dependence, or which is intended to be and is permanently and habitually used as a part of the property constituting the real estate of the owner upon which it was placed, becomes a part of that realty, whether it can be removed without physical injury to the realty or not, however slight its physical connection with the real estate, and even when there is no actual fastening of the one to the other.

The retention by contract of title to materials furnished as security for the purchase price by the claimant of a mechanic's lien is not inconsistent with, and will not estop the vendor from enforcing, his statutory lien.

Where an engine was to be delivered by the shipper at the city of the vendee, and when it arrived at the station there the vendee, in answer to the question of the railroad agent, 'What disposition?' answered, 'Send it to our plant,' and it was so sent without extra charge for freight, held, that the direction of the vendee was a mere designation of the place of delivery within the original destination, and not the starting of the engine on an additional journey, and that delivery was not made until it was received at the plant.

A mechanic's lien attaches to the real estate upon which the material or labor is bestowed at the time it is furnished, and is not devested or lost by the subsequent destruction of the improvement.

Edwin C. Meservey (Charles W. German, on the brief), for plaintiff in error and appellant.

Samuel W. Moore (Gardiner Lathrop and Oramel W. Pratt, on the brief), for defendants in error and appellees.

This is a suit to enforce a mechanic's lien for the balance of the purchase price of an engine. The Jacob Dold Packing Company, the respondent, was a corporation which owned and operated a packing plant in Kansas City, in the state of Missouri. On December 16, 1897, John Featherstone's Sons, a corporation, contracted to furnish to the Dold Company at Kansas City a refrigerating plant consisting of an engine and other machinery, for the sum of $18,750. The Hooven, Owens & Rentschler Company, another corporation, and the appellant here, agreed with Featherstone's Sons that it would furnish the engine for $6,001.28. It did so. The engine was incorporated with the plant of the Dold Company, and the appellant was paid $1,499.90, while a balance of $4,501.38 of the purchase price remained unpaid. The Rentschler Company filed a claim of a mechanic's lien for this balance, under the statutes of Missouri, upon certain property of the Dold Company at Kansas City in which the engine had been embodied, and brought this suit to enforce its lien. There was a decree that it was entitled to no relief, and this decree is challenged by the appeal before us. (C.C.) 99 F. 180.

Before SANBORN and THAYER, Circuit Judges, and ADAMS, District Judge.

SANBORN Circuit Judge, after stating the case as above, .

The court specifically found the facts in this case, and then held as conclusions of law that the claim of lien which the appellant filed did not contain a sufficient description of the property sought to be charged to identify it, and that it contained one item, amounting to $74.35, which was furnished under a different contract from that under which the engine was provided, and for these reasons it rendered a decree that 'the plaintiff is not entitled to the enforcement of its alleged mechanic's lien as against the defendant Jacob Dold Packing Company, and that the plaintiff take nothing by its action herein, and that the defendant Jacob Dold Packing Company go hence without day, and have and recover of the plaintiff its costs. ' The appellant avers that these conclusions of law are erroneous, and that on this account the decree should be reversed. The Dold Company maintains the correctness of these rulings of the court, and also insists that they are not here for our consideration, because: (1) The decree is not final; (2) the suit was tried below as an action at law, no objections were made to the evidence, and its sufficiency to sustain the decree was not challenged by a request that the court should hold it insufficient; and (3) the assignment of errors is alleged to be defective.

The argument in support of the position that the decree is not final runs in this way: This was a suit by the subcontractor the Rentschler Company, against its debtor, Featherstone's Sons, and the owner of the packing plant, the Dold Company, to enforce a mechanic's lien upon the property of the respondent. The debtor, Featherstone's Sons, was named as a defendant in the petition and summons, but was never properly served with process, and never appeared in the action. It was, however, under the practice in Missouri, a necessary party to the suit, and no final decree for the complainant could be lawfully rendered without its actual or constructive presence in the proceeding. Rev. St. Mo. 1899, Sec. 4211. It is therefore contended that the decree rendered is not final, and hence is not reviewable here,...