Kivett v. Nevils

• Decision Date: 10 February 1950
• Citation: 190 Tenn. 12,26 Beeler 12,227 S.W.2d 39
• Parties: , 190 Tenn. 12 KIVETT v. NEVILS et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 39

227 S.W.2d 39

26 Beeler 12, 190 Tenn. 12

KIVETT v. NEVILS et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

Feb. 10, 1950.

Jackson C. Kramer and R. R. Kramer, Knoxville, for complainant (appellant).

Broughton & Broughton, Knoxville, John P. Davis, Tazewell, for defendants (appellees).

GAILOR, Justice.

The bill in this cause was filed in the Chancery Court of Claiborne County, and charged the defendants with uttering and publishing certain false and malicious slanders and defamations against the complainant, and that defendants, in connection with said slanders and defendants, were exhibiting a certain letter purporting to be signed by the complainant; that said letter was spurious and a forgery; that the substance of said slanders and defamations was that the complainant had been guilty of illicit sexual relations with a fifteen-year-old girl; and that the letter purported to have been written by the complainant to the girl, to effect a settlement of a lawsuit threatened by her. The prayer of the bill was that the defendants be required to answer, and that a subpoena duces tecum issue and be served upon defendants, requiring them to produce and file with the Clerk the letter described in the bill and purporting to have been written by the complainant. The defendants demurred to the bill and the Chancellor sustained the demurrer, dismissed the bill and complainant has appealed.

To support the appeal, it is argued that the bill is in the nature of a bill quia timet; that complainant had the right to file it as such, and that, therefore, the Chancellor improperly sustained the demurrer.

If considered as a declaration at law, the bill of the complainant stated a cause of action that had accrued under Code sec. 9310, therefore the equitable doctrine quia timet had no application. Statement of the basis of the doctrine is well made by Judge Turney in Lynn v. Polk, 76 Tenn. 121, at page 127: 'It is the inability of courts of law to operate prospectively by prohibition for the prevention of mischief, that has established upon clear and definite grounds that portion of chancery jurisdiction which rests upon the doctrine of quia timet. It embraces a great variety of interest, which we need not and do not design to investigate here. It sufficeth for this case to say, that it always applies where great and irreparable mischief may be the consequence of the illegal action, which the common law courts cannot stop.' (Emphasis supplied.)

It follows from this...