Roanoke Guano Co. v. Saunders

• Decision Date: 29 June 1911
• Citation: 173 Ala. 347,56 So. 198
• Parties: ROANOKE GUANO CO. v. SAUNDERS ET AL.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

56 So. 198

173 Ala. 347

ROANOKE GUANO CO. v. SAUNDERS ET AL.

Supreme Court of Alabama

June 29, 1911

Appeal from Chancery Court, Randolph County; W. W. Whiteside Chancellor.

Suit by the Roanoke Guano Company against Hattie S. Saunders and others. From an adverse decree, complainant appeals. Affirmed.

Lackey & Bridges, for appellant.

Barnes & Denson and N. D. Denson, for appellees.

MAYFIELD J.

The appellant owns and operates a fertilizer factory, and uses large quantities of sulphuric acid in manufacturing such fertilizers. The natural and necessary result of the use of these acids is that sulphuric fumes and vapors in large quantities are emitted from the factory, and these gases and vapors are noxious and offensive to the inhabitants of the immediate vicinity, and are more or less injurious, if not destructive, to vegetable life near the said plant.

The appellees, each of whom was the owner of land near the appellant's factory, brought actions in the circuit court of Randolph county, to recover damages for injury to their crops and timber growing upon their lands near the appellant's factory. Thereupon the appellant filed this bill in the chancery court of Randolph county, to enjoin the actions at law and to have the damages of the several plaintiffs assessed and determined in one suit. A temporary injunction was issued, to this effect, upon the filing of the bill. The respondents then demurred to the bill, assigning many grounds thereto, among them, one for want of equity and one for multifariousness. Upon the hearing of the demurrer it was sustained. Thereupon the complainant amended its bill by making the allegations fuller, and adding to the prayer that, if on final hearing it should be decreed that complainant's plant was a public nuisance, it should be abated. To the amended bill, the respondents again interposed demurrer, assigning the same grounds which were assigned to the original bill, which demurrer was sustained, the bill dismissed, and the temporary injunction dissolved, and from that decree this appeal is prosecuted by the complainant. It was attempted to rest the equity of the bill upon two grounds of equity jurisdiction; first, to prevent and enjoin a multiplicity of suits, and, second, to abate a nuisance.

It has been stated by this court that it has never undertaken to define the jurisdiction of equity to prevent a multiplicity of suits, nor even to lay down the general principles governing the several categories of cases in which that jurisdiction may be invoked; but this court has evinced an inclination toward confining this jurisdiction to a narrow field, in order to conserve and preserve the right of trial by jury. Turner v. Mobile, 135 Ala. 124, 33 So. 132 and cases there cited. Bills of this character are called bills in the nature of bills of peace, to quiet the rights of parties and to put an end to further litigation.

It was said by this court, in the case of Turner v. Mobile, supra, that equity will not take jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits in order to lessen its own labors or those of other courts; that the court itself has no equity, but that equity must reside in the party filing the bill. It has been said by other courts that to avoid a multiplicity of suits is a ground of equity jurisdiction, but that multiplicity of suits does not mean multitude of suits. The mere fact that many persons have similar or like independent rights or causes of action does not confer the right to invoke equity jurisdiction. Equity has no power to amalgamate several independent legal rights so as to constitute but one equitable right, and thereby allow all to join in equity, on the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits. The rule is different from that governing cases in which one party is subjected to, or threatened with, a multitude of vexatious actions at law, or is threatened with numerous and continued wrongs, so that many and repeated actions will be necessary; in such cases the multitude of the possible actions at law is, of itself, sufficient to give him the right to redress such wrongs, and to create the equity jurisdiction of multiplicity of suits.

Prior to the publication of Mr. Pomeroy's inestimable work on Equity Jurisprudence, it was thought to be a requisite to the equity of a bill which rested solely upon the ground of preventing or enjoining a multiplicity of actions at law that there should be a mutuality among the many complainants or defendants, as the case might be, as to the subject-matter of the suit; that a mere mutuality as to the facts and the law, in the many cases, was not sufficient. In this work, Mr. Pomeroy, after stating the general rule theretofore announced in the text-books on the subject, and in many, if not all the adjudicated cases, that there must be a mutuality of title to, or a community of interest in, the subject-matter involved, proceeded to state another rule, viz., that there is a class of cases in which a mere community of interest in the questions of law and of fact involved in the general controversy is sufficient to warrant the interposition of equity to settle, in one suit, the several controversies.

Mr. Pomeroy was at first taken to task as to the correctness of this proposition by Chief Justice Campbell, of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, in Tribette's Case, 70 Miss. 182, 12 So. 32, 19 L. R. A. 660, 35 Am. St. Rep. 642, wherein a great number of property owners had brought suit against the Illinois Central Railroad Company, to recover damages for destruction of their property by fire emitted from that company's locomotives, and wherein the railroad company had filed its bill to enjoin the many actions and to settle the entire controversy, as to liability vel non, and the extent of the damages to the several plaintiffs, in one suit. The equity of the bill was denied by Chief Justice Campbell, who held that the community of interest in the facts and the law involved was not sufficient. 1 Pom. 255-269.

This text was again criticised and declared unsound by this court, in the case of Turner v. Mobile, 135 Ala. 73, 33 So. 132, in which it was said that the decisions cited by Mr. Pomeroy did not sustain the proposition announced in the text; that mere community of interest in questions of law and of fact was sufficient. These two opinions--the one by McClellan, Chief Justice of Alabama, and the other by Campbell, Chief Justice of Mississippi--are certainly among the leading and best-considered cases, on the subject of the equity of a bill to prevent a multiplicity of suits, appearing in the reports since Mr. Pomeroy's publication on Equity Jurisprudence.

Unfortunately, however, the text announced by Mr. Pomeroy has been followed in a great number of adjudicated cases, and probably in the majcrity of the cases in which the exact proposition involved has been passed upon. Among such cases are those of Southern Steel Co. v. Hopkins, 157 Ala. 175, 47 So. 274, 20 L. R. A. (N. S.) 848, 131 Am. St. Rep. 20, and Whitlock v. Yazoo Co., from the Supreme Court of Mississippi, reported in 91 Miss. 779, 45 So. 861. The last two cases clearly support the text announced by Mr. Pomeroy, which was declared unsound by the Supreme Court of Mississippi, in Tribette's Case, and by this court in Turner's Case. But the decision by the Supreme Court of Mississippi did not overrule its pioneer case of Tribette nor those which cite it or refer to it; neither did this court, in Hopkins' Case, overrule Turner's Case; but Chief Justice Tyson, who wrote the opinion, did say that there are expressions in the opinion of McClellan, C.J., in Turner's Case, that are in conflict with what was decided in Hopkins' Case, notwithstanding there are others which support the conclusion in the Hopkins Case. He then quotes from the opinion in Turner's Case, and concludes by saying that the questions in Hopkins' Case come directly within the fourth class, as defined by Mr. Pomeroy and Judge McClellan. See 1 Pom. Eq. Jur. 255-269. It appears, therefore, that there was no intention on the part of the writer, nor on that of the court, in the Hopkins Case, to overrule the Turner Case; but, on the other hand, that the court considered the Turner Case, or a part thereof, as authority for the decision in the Hopkins Case.

After a careful review and comparison of these two cases, we are of the opinion that they conflict. While, of course, they are distinguishable in many respects, yet they are in direct conflict as to the fundamental proposition that a bill to prevent a multiplicity of suits contains no equity, if the parties have a community of interest only in the question of fact and of law involved, and none in the subject-matter. In other words, the Turner Case holds that a community of interest in the subject-matter of the several actions is necessary to give equity jurisdiction, when it is based solely upon the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits and that community of interest in the questions of law and of fact involved in the several actions alone is not sufficient; whereas, in Hopkins' Case the exact converse of this proposition is held. In fact, the sole ground of equity cognizance in the Hopkins Case was rested upon the community of interest in the questions of fact and of law involved in the 110 suits brought against the complainant in courts of law. There was confessedly and concededly no community of interest in the subject-matter of any two of such actions at law, much less among all. It was for this very reason that the bills in the Turner Case and the Tribette Case, 70 Miss. 182, 12 So. 32, 19 L. R. A. 660, 35 Am. St. Rep. 642, were held to be without equity. Therefore, after a careful consideration of these two cases, and of the decisions of this...