Marshall v. Holmes

• Decision Date: 01 March 1887
• Docket Number: 9929
• Citation: 1 So. 610,39 La.Ann. 313
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: MRS. SARAH E. MARSHALL v. H. B. HOLMES, SHERIFF, ET AL

1 So. 610

39 La.Ann. 313

MRS. SARAH E. MARSHALL v. H. B. HOLMES, SHERIFF, ET AL

No. 9929

Supreme Court of Louisiana

March 1, 1887

APPEAL from the Eighth District Court, parish of Madison. Deloney, J.

Walton Farrar, Wade R. Young and J. G. Hawkes for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Stone &amp Murphy for Defendants and Appellees.

OPINION

POCHE J.

Plaintiff, owner of a plantation, was made a co-defendant with twenty-four of her tenants, in twenty-four different suits instituted by D. Mayer, for the recovery of various sums of money due him by the tenants respectively, on account of advances made to them in working animals, and general plantation supplies, and for the enforcement against Mrs. Marshall of an alleged obligation on her part to deliver to Mayer a sufficient quantity of cotton to satisfy the amount due by each of her aforesaid tenants.

In one of the suits, entitled D. Mayer vs. William Talliaferro, the following agreement was entered into by counsel of both parties:

"In this case it is agreed between plaintiff and defendant through their counsel, that this shall be test case of all the cases numbered from 595 to 618, inclusive of both, and the final decision of this case shall be decisive of all the issues involved in said cases of like character as those in the case being tried, and at the April term of the District Court judgment by said court shall be rendered upon the issues as decided and passed upon in this case in the appellate court."

From a judgment against her in the District Court, Mrs. Marshall took an appeal to the Court of Appeals, where the judgment was amended in some particulars, and otherwise affirmed.

Whereupon the District Court entered a judgment in conformity with the conclusions of the Court of Appeals in each of the twenty-three other suits embraced in the agreement of counsel hereinbefore referred to. Mrs. Marshall then had recourse to the present suit, by means of which she seeks to enjoin the execution, and to obtain a decree declaring the nullity of the twenty-four judgments rendered as above set forth.

She prosecutes this appeal before us from a judgment of the District Court rejecting her demand and dismissing her action with damages of twenty per cent on the amount of each of the judgments aforesaid.

The point made by appellees' counsel to the effect that this Court has no jurisdiction ratione materiae is well taken, and hence it must be sustained.

The highest amount involved in any one of the twenty-four suits is $ 361 20. Hence it is clear that not one of the judgments could by itself have been appealed to this Court.

This is conceded, in fact, by appellant herself by taking her first appeal from the judgment in the Talliaferro case, which she brought to the Court of Appeals, although, under the agreement of her counsel, the final judgment rendered there was practically a decision of the twenty-three other cases.

Can she now vest jurisdiction in this Court, in an action of nullity by cumulating twenty-four judgments in one petition?

The question is answered in the negative by the very nature of things as well as by our jurisprudence.

...