Smith v. Cretors
| Decision Date | 29 September 1917 |
| Docket Number | 31088 |
| Parties | M. D. SMITH, Guardian, Appellee, v. IVA CRETORS, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Union District Court.--H. K. EVANS, Judge.
SUIT in equity to determine whether or not the appellant, who is the mother of appellee Walter Quick, and was his guardian, should be decreed to pay over the proceeds of land sold by her, the claim being that the land sold belonged to the minor. The court so decreed, and Iva Cretors appeals.
Reversed.
Brown & Ferguson, for appellant.
L. J Camp, for appellee. (No brief.)
The issue tried out was formed by a contest over whether the appellant should be removed as guardian, and this proceeding was finally so dealt with as that the trial court passed upon the questions presented in a suit in equity. The complainant has evidence which, if there be no tenable avoidance, we may assume justifies the decree appealed from. But while this may be so, if there is no bar to considering and giving weight to such evidence, we have first to decide whether a plea of estoppel by adjudication has been sustained, and whether the trial court was warranted in acting in disregard of that plea, as it did do. We need not elaborate upon the proposition that, no matter how meritorious the claim of appellee may be, ordinarily he may present it but once.
The appellant presents a plea which, in due form, asserts that appellee is estopped to litigate whether or not appellant owned the land with the proceeds of which it was attempted to charge her. This plea is based upon the claim that, though nominally the defendant in a former action, she was the real party in interest and real plaintiff therein, though one Harness was the nominal one; that, in that suit, she and her ward, and minor son, were the defendants named; and that it was therein adjudicated that her said son, the real plaintiff in the present suit, had no title to, claim upon, or interest in, the land involved in both suits. It appears without conflict that both said parties defendant in the first suit made due appearance therein, and that the son was duly served with notice and duly defended by a guardian ad litem. The petition in the first suit, with some additions to be noted in another connection was the usual one to quiet title; the decree was within the issues tendered, and adjudges that plaintiff in the first suit has full title, and the defendants therein have no title nor interest. That decree stands, and is unmodified. The naked fact that, in an action to quiet title, there is a decree quieting title in plaintiff, operates as a decision that defendant has no title or claim. Farrar v. Clark, 97 Ind. 447, at 449; Board County Com. v. Welch, (Kan.) 20 P. 483; 2 Black, Judgments (2d Ed.), Sec. 664; Stevens v. Hughes, 31 Pa. 381; Indiana, B. & W. R. Co. v. Allen, (Ind.) 15 N.E. 446; Hays v. Carr, 83 Ind. 275, at 288. Of course, that is the adjudication where, as here, it is expressly decreed that plaintiff has full title, and that defendant has no title or interest. Davis v. Lennen, (Ind.) 24 N.E. 885; Cooter v. Baston, 89 Ind. 185, at 186; 1 Freeman on Judgments (4th Ed.), Sec. 309.
The plea interposed is not the strict res adjudicata, but urges an estoppel to relitigate whatever is covered by any finding in the first suit which must have been the vital basis of the decree therein entered. On such plea the court may go beyond the face of the judgment, and the right to litigate successfully in the second suit may be foreclosed, because it is found upon such investigation that the decree pleaded could not have been entered without finding against the suitor that fact upon establishing which his success in the second suit depends. And both here, and, of course, as against an express finding that defendant has no title, it is immaterial that the loser in the first suit failed there to defend with all he had. These propositions are so well settled that citations in their support would be mere pedantry. Then, too, the minor filed in the first suit a sworn disclaimer, in which he declares in manifest effect that he has no claim or title, and ought not to have; that conveyances made to him are not effective; that later conveyances to his mother are, and ought to be; and that he is fully advised of the truth, and had no concealment practiced upon him. And appellant may well claim that the appellee was, by the decree in the first suit, excluded from all rights in this land, if for no other reason than because of the rule that, where one makes concessions of record material to the issue, the decree involves a finding in accordance with such concession. Prouty v. Matheson, 107 Iowa 259, at 263, 77 N.W. 1039; Burgess v. Stribling, (Mich.) 108 N.W. 421; In re Thoma, 117 Iowa 275, 90 N.W. 581. But, as said, the appellant needs no aid from either of these well-established law rules, because by no possibility can they accomplish more for her than does the fact that the decree in the first suit expressly adjudged that her grantee had full title, and that her son had none.
The decree in the first suit was set aside and disregarded. We are not able to find that it was even attacked. There certainly is no attack in terms. There is and can be no claim that the disregarded judgment lacks jurisdiction. We are unable to find any allegation that same was obtained by the practice of any fraud upon parties or court. The allegations of the petition for removal, which was the vehicle for complaining of the appellant's dealing with this land, do not go beyond asserting that the interests of the mother in said land are adverse and hostile to the complaining minor, wherefore he prays that she be cited to show cause why she should not be removed as guardian; that, upon sufficient showing having been made, she be removed, and some suitable person appointed in her stead; and that said guardian be given authority to bring any necessary action or actions for the recovery of property belonging to the minor; and that the court make such other and further orders as may be deemed just in the premises, including a decree that the title to the proceeds of said land is in and should be transferred to the minor. Not a suggestion by way of replying to the plea of estoppel by adjudication through said first decree.
Passing that, if it may be passed, we come to the question whether the evidence warrants what was done. Possibly (and we suggest the possibility merely because we are at a loss to understand why the action was taken) the trial court gave controlling effect to the fact, if it be one, that mother and son were both defendants. This theory is suggested by the terms of the decree now in review, which declares that the first decree is not binding between mother and son. Passing whether the mother was not in fact a plaintiff,--if the decree rests on the position that the mother and son were not adversative parties and that, therefore, there was no adjudication as between them as to where the title lay,--the conclusion runs counter to Devin v. City of Ottumwa, 53 Iowa 461, 466, 5 N.W. 552, approved in City of Sioux City v. Chicago & N.W. R. Co., 129 Iowa 694, at 702, 106 N.W. 183, and City of El Reno v. Cleveland-Trinidad P. Co., (Okla.) 107 P. 163, where, as here, the parties were, on the record, parties on the same side.
If this was not the theory of the trial court, it must have proceeded on one or both of two other theories: either because it found (and it does so find) that the minor is the true owner of the property, and that no subsequent conveyance from his grantor was sufficient to defeat his rights; or that the mother, being under contract obligation to release a mortgage upon the land, had instead obtained said mortgage, transferred it, caused a sheriff's deed title to be erected upon it, and the grantee in the sheriff's deed to convey to her.
It but states a truism to repeat that it will not suffice to set aside the first...
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