Patterson v. McCamant

• Decision Date: 31 March 1859
• Parties: PATTERSON & WIFE, Defendants in Error, v. MCCAMANT, Plaintiff in Error.^a1
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

28 Mo. 210

PATTERSON & WIFE, Defendants in Error,

v.MCCAMANT, Plaintiff in Error.^a1

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1859.

1. A bill of peace to restrain a person from instituting ejectment suits against another, on the ground that such suits would be vexatious, cannot be maintained unless the title to the land in dispute has been fully and satisfactorily litigated at law; the institution of repeated ejectment suits, if the same are abandoned before trial, cannot furnish a foundation for the maintenance of a bill of peace to restrain vexatious litigation.

Error to St. Louis Land Court.

The facts sufficiently appear in the opinion of the court.

Cates and Casselberry, for plaintiff in error.

Glover and H. M. Jones, for defendants in error.

NAPTON, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

We have not been able to perceive any principle upon which the decree in this case can stand. The principle asserted in the bill and carried out by the decree is, that a court of equity will interpose its authority by perpetual injunction in favor of a person in possession of land, whose title is threatened by another person holding a worthless claim to the same land, where the person holding the adverse title is insolvent, and he has already brought two suits in ejectments and cause them to be dismissed or taken nonsuits. These were the material facts upon which the decree was based.

The case is supposed to fall within a class of equitable proceedings termed bills of peace, but the petition will be found to lack the essential elements of such bills. There are two kinds of bills of peace, and only two kinds. The first is, where courts of equity, upon the sole ground of preventing multiplicity of suits, will try a title or have it tried upon proper issues, because there is a number of persons interested in it, and a great many actions at law would be necessary to conclude the title. Suits concerning fisheries, parochial titles, &c., are of this kind and fall within this class. Another class of cases is where the title has been fully and satisfactorily litigated at law. It put a stop to vexatious suits, which courts of law cannot do; equity will interpose by injunction.

In this case, there is but a single claimant and a single party in possession, and it is not asserted in the bill nor found by the court that any trial at law has ever been had. It is not perceived how the alleged fact of insolvency can give any additional claim to an interposition by injunction. If the title is worthless and the holder of it insolvent, the latter circumstance would not seem to give it any additional importance as a means of annoyance. The right which a party plaintiff has in all actions to take a nonsuit, although its exercise may, in ejectment as well as other forms of action, occasion annoyance and protract litigation, is not believed to be a sufficient cause of itself to warrant a court of equity to interpose its power of injunction. The statute has prescribed a limit within which actions must be brought; but so long as a party keeps within that limit, his right to sue and to abandon his suit as often as he pleases, can not be questioned. As he has to pay the costs of such dismissal or nonsuits, that circumstance will, it is presumed, in most cases, furnish a sufficient protection to his adversary against abuses of the power. The bill, answer, evidence and finding of the court will show this case to partake more of the nature of an action of ejectment than a bill in equity, since the title on both sides was investigated and determined. No authority has been found to justify a court of equity in trying the merits of adverse titles upon a bill of peace, unless under the circumstances we have...