Mound City Co. v. Castleman

• Decision Date: 15 July 1909
• Docket Number: 2,320.
• Citation: 171 F. 520
• Parties: MOUND CITY CO. v. CASTLEMAN et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri

171 F. 520

MOUND CITY CO. v. CASTLEMAN et al.

No. 2,320.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Missouri, Central Division.

July 15, 1909

Silver & Brown, for plaintiff.

W. M Williams, John Cosgrove, W. G. G. T. Pendleton, and Campbell Cummings, for defendants.

PHILIPS District Judge.

The exceptions filed by the complainant to the answers of the defendants fitly enough illustrate the unnecessary delays in reaching a final decree in chancery cases. When at the March term, 1909, of this court, the complainant, after so much delay, filed its supplemental bill against the defendants' protest, and the defendants expressed a desire to raise objections to certain portions of the amended bill, the court suggested, in order to expedite the final hearing of the cause, that the defendants make answer, in which they could avail themselves on the final hearing of all there was in the matter of their objections affecting the merits of the controversy. This was acquiesced in. On April 16, 1909, the defendants made full answer, to which the complainant has filed a most unusual number of exceptions for impertinency, going to almost every feature of the pleadings.

Whether allowed or disallowed, as to many of them, would not control or affect the questions of law and fact which will ultimately determine the merits of this controversy.

Many of the criticisms made upon the answers pertain to matters of technical procedure, which, at one time was so much adhered to by chancellors, the Supreme Court in formulating the equity rules sought to obviate. Rule 37, for instance declares:

'No demurrer or plea shall be held bad and overruled upon argument, only because the answer of the defendant may extend to some part of the same matter as may be covered by such demurrer or plea.'

Rule 39 declares, inter alia, that:

'The defendant shall be entitled in all cases by answer to insist upon all matters of defense (not being matters of abatement, or to the character of the parties, or matters of form) in bar of or to the merits of the bill, of which he may be entitled to avail himself by a plea in bar; and in such answer he shall not be compellable to answer any other matters than he would be compellable to answer and discover upon filing a plea in bar, and an answer in support of such plea, touching the matters set forth in the bill to avoid or repel the bar or defense.'

Giving to these rules a construction in furtherance of their spirit and object, many of the exceptions taken to the answers herein are quite inconsequential. For instance, the answer pleads in bar, as is permissible in connection with matters of defense to the merits, a proceeding and judgment in the state court in partition between the original parties to the bill of the same lands mentioned in the bill of complaint which matters the answers plead have passed in rem judicatum. The objection made in argument to the extended reference made in the plea to the proceedings in the state court, leading up to the final judgment therein, if I correctly comprehended it, is that it would have been sufficient merely to have pleaded the judgment as the ultimate fact. If this were an action based upon a judgment, it doubtless would have been sufficient to have alleged that the judgment was duly rendered in the proceeding in a court of competent jurisdiction between the same parties, or the like; but the plea in bar under consideration is to show that, under the pleadings and issues, the proceedings had pertained to and covered the whole question of the...