Meredith v. John Deere Plow Company of Moline, Ill.

• Decision Date: 20 November 1958
• Docket Number: No. 16036.,16036.
• Citation: 261 F.2d 121
• Parties: Merritt M. MEREDITH, Appellant, v. JOHN DEERE PLOW COMPANY OF MOLINE, ILLINOIS, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

261 F.2d 121 (1958)

Merritt M. MEREDITH, Appellant, v. JOHN DEERE PLOW COMPANY OF MOLINE, ILLINOIS, Appellee.

No. 16036.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

November 20, 1958.

Merritt M. Meredith pro se.

Raymond A. Smith, Council Bluffs, Iowa (Abel V. Shotwell, Omaha, Neb., with him on the brief) for appellee.

Before JOHNSEN, VAN OOSTERHOUT and MATTHES, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

Appellee brought suit in the District Court for an injunction, to prevent appellant from continuing, commencing or prosecuting any proceeding against it, in state or federal court, attempting to relitigate the same cause of action, or any right, question or fact relating to the subject matter thereof, which had been involved in the decisions of the District Court and the affirmances made thereof by this Court, in Meredith v. John Deere Plow Company of Moline, Illinois, 8 Cir., 185 F.2d 481; Meredith v. John Deere Plow Company of Moline, Illinois, 8 Cir., 206 F.2d 196; and Meredith v. John Deere Plow Company of Moline, Illinois, 8 Cir., 244 F.2d 9.

Appellant is a farm-implement dealer in Iowa, who has also been admitted to the bar of that State. For a period of eight years, he has been subjecting appellee to the annoyance, burden and expense of a continuing series of lawsuits, instituted by him pro se, all of which have been predicated on the theory and claim that appellee has, since 1945, been wrongfully depriving him of the right to handle appellee's line of farm implements and machinery.

In the first suit referred to above, 185 F.2d 481, appellant sought to recover damages in breach for appellee's termination of his alleged oral contract of dealership or agency. The District Court held, 89 F.Supp. 787, that the relationship asserted by him was on its face one that under Iowa law was terminable at will and hence was without any enforceability. We affirmed.

In his next suit, 206 F.2d 196, appellant sought to use the relationship as a basis for an accounting as to the sales of appellee's implements and machinery occurring in the territory subsequent to the termination of his agency. We affirmed the dismissal made of this case, repeating our previous holding that "the agreement upon which the plaintiff relied was not enforceable against the defendant, being terminable at will".

In his third suit, 244 F.2d 9, appellant sought specific performance of the agency relationship, ignoring his initial recognition of a termination having occurred, and refusing also to accord any legal effect to the holding in the two earlier cases that the alleged agreement lacked enforceability.

Throughout all this litigation, appellant has taken the position that he has the right, and that he intends, to continue to institute suits against appellant to try to obtain a redress of the wrong which he evidently feels has been done him. He appears to be possessed of the notion that the dismissal of one suit on or involving the contract cannot operate to bar another, without a formal trial upon the facts which he claims existed. We tolerantly pointed out to him in our third opinion, 244 F.2d at pages 10-11, that, under Rule 41(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A., the orders of dismissal made against him operated legally as an adjudication upon the merits of his claim. Lacking enforceability, the agency or dealership agreement necessarily was without basis to support an action, whether in damages, accounting, or specific performance, or any other theory of reach against appellee's termination.

In his answer in the present suit, as well as in his brief here, appellant admits that, until and except for the institution of this injunction suit, he was planning to bring another action against appellee — this time on the theory that appellee had promised never to cancel his agency or dealership; had made that promise without intention to keep it; and so was guilty of a fraud against him. He repeats the statement which he has made in his previous suits that he was induced to do things in reliance upon the non-cancellability of the agency agreement and relationship, which he was not obligated to do, and which should preclude appellant from engaging in termination, either as a matter of lack of right or as a matter of estoppel.

This aspect, which, as noted, has been injected into all of his cases, was expressly dealt with in the trial court's opinion in the first case, Meredith v. John Deere Plow Co. of Moline, D.C.S.D. Iowa, 89 F.Supp. 787, 793-795, where it was held that the fact that appellant might trustingly have made changes or expenditures to promote the sales of appellee's products and the business of the agency, when he had no legal obligation to do so, or that he had agreed not to engage in handling a competitive line of products during the period of his agency, was not sufficient under Iowa law, on the circumstances involved, as against the nature of the agreement generally and its lack of expressed and pervading mutuality otherwise, to transform the agency relationship into a life-time obligation on the part of appellee, while leaving it as one terminable wholly at will in appellant's favor.

In so holding, the court took into account, among other decisions, Lewis v. Minnesota Mut. Life Ins. Co., 240 Iowa 1249, 37 N.W.2d 316, where the Iowa Supreme Court had incidentally noted that the situation there involved (as here) was not one of...