Southern Steel Co. v. Hopkins

• Decision Date: 13 February 1908
• Citation: 47 So. 274,157 Ala. 175
• Parties: SOUTHERN STEEL CO. v. HOPKINS ET AL.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

47 So. 274

157 Ala. 175

SOUTHERN STEEL CO. v. HOPKINS ET AL.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 13, 1908

Rehearing Denied July 3, 1908.

Appeal from Chancery Court, Jefferson County; Alfred H. Benners Chancellor.

Bill by the Southern Steel Company against Wiley Hopkins administrator, and others. From a decree dismissing the bill complainant appeals. Reversed and rendered.

Campbell & Johnston (E. K. Campbell and Forney Johnston, of counsel), for appellant.

Frank S. White & Sons, Caldwell & Carmichael, Bowman, Harsh & Beddow, Stallings & Drennen, Robert M. Bell, B. M. Allen, George P. Bondurant, John C. Carmichael, W. K. Terry, D. B. Anderson, Sam Will John, John S. Kennedy, H. K. White, and Smith & Smith, for appellees.

TYSON C.J.

Two questions only are involved in this appeal: One, whether the appellant was a party who could file the bill; second, whether the court has jurisdiction of the case made. The lower court dismissed the bill for want of equity, deciding both points against the appellant.

The appellant is the resultant or successor and assign by consolidation of two corporations--one the Alabama Steel & Wire Company, and the other the Underwood Coal & Iron Company--in December, 1905. The Alabama Steel & Wire Company having been sued at law on a liability existing prior to the consolidation, the first question is: Can the appellant, the new company, assert the rights, equities, and defenses of the wire company, as set up in the bill in this case. We think there ought to be no doubt about this right. The appellant is the successor in law of the merged companies. It succeeds to all their respective rights, privileges, powers, and franchises, and becomes liable for all their debts, liabilities, and duties, and thus plainly has the right to defend and prosecute suits at law and in equity for the protection of its rights, the same as the original companies could do. The original company in this case in all prosecutions and defenses in its name would necessarily act for and under the control of the new company. The policy of the law and the character of the change affected by the consolidation of the corporations are shown by section 1151 of the Code, and by Gen. Acts 1903, pp. 331, 332, § 40. See Johnson v. State, 88 Ala. 176, 7 So. 253. If the name of the original corporation was essential in this proceeding on special objection urging and showing such necessity, the defect could easily have been cured by amendment, and therefore was not available on motion to dismiss.

The second question is whether the bill is properly filed as one to avoid a multiplicity of suits. An explosion occurred in a mine owned by the wire company, by which 110 persons lost their lives, and 110 separate suits were brought by their representatives to recover damages for alleged negligence by the owner of the mine, by which the accident occurred. The appellant, alleging that the wire company (and it, as its successor) has a perfect defense applicable alike to all these suits, filed the bill in this case to enjoin actions at law until this defense could be determined. The question abstractly is whether the court has jurisdiction of any case of this kind; for, if it has, this case must come within the rule, since the allegations show that, though the defense be perfectly good, it would be impossible for the appellant to properly present the same at law, because many of the cases would be on trial in different courts at the same time, and further show that the expenses and costs of the litigation at law would be ruinous, though successful against every plaintiff.

It is objected, by the appellees, that the negligence alleged being a several and separate wrong as to each party injured, and there being no privity or common interest between the defendants in the actions at law, the court of chancery has no jurisdiction to enjoin their suits to avoid a multiplicity of suits. The principle upon which this jurisdiction is established is that it is the duty of the government to furnish a full, adequate, and complete remedy for the assertion and protection of all property rights of its citizens; and this bill is filed upon the idea that it is the peculiar function of the chancery jurisdiction to supplement the law courts and to give such remedy when it does not exist at law in a way "as practical and efficient to the ends of justice as the remedy in equity," and that there is no plain, adequate, complete, and practical remedy for appellants' protection in the courts of law. Boyce v. Grundy, 3 Pet. (U. S.) 210, 7 L.Ed. 655; Oelrich v. Spain, 15 Wall. (U. S.) 211-228, 21 L.Ed. 43; Allen v. Hanks, 136 U.S. 311, 10 S.Ct. 961, 34 L.Ed. 414.

The right of defense, and of a form of defense as efficient and practical as the nature of the transaction will reasonably admit of, are rights as sacred as the corresponding rights of prosecution for the assertion of property rights. There can be no distinction, nor is there any, between the right to an efficient remedy for defense and one for the reclamation of property, as protection in the acquisition and in the defense of property is only the application of the same principle of security in different forms. Brown v. New Jersey, 175 U.S. 175, 20 S.Ct. 77, 44 L.Ed. 119; West v. Louisiana, 194 U.S. 258-263, 24 S.Ct. 650, 48 L.Ed. 965.

Independent of special grounds for proceeding in equity, the court at an early date assumed a jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits by settling in a single case a right or transaction which at law involved the trial of numerous cases, entailing loss of time and perhaps ruin in costs. 1 Spence's Equitable Jurisdiction, 657; Lord Tenham v. Herbert, 2 Atk. 483; Hanson v. Gardner, 7 Ves. 309, 310. Lord Hardwicke, in the Case of Tenham, supra, expressed the rule as to when a bill of this kind could be filed and when the right must first be established at law. Not quoting the authorities cited in 26 English Reports (Reprint) 692, sustaining his position, he said: "Undoubtedly there are some cases in which a man may, by a bill of this kind, come into this court first; and there are others where he ought first to establish his right at law. It is certain, where a man sets up a general exclusive right, and where the persons who controvert it with him are very numerous, and he cannot, by one or two actions at law, quiet that right, he may come into this court first, which is caller a 'bill of peace,' and the court will direct an issue to determine the right, as in disputes between lords of manors and their tenants, and between tenants of one manor and another; for in these cases there would be no end of bringing actions of trespass, since each action would determine only the particular right in question between the plaintiff and defendant. As to the case of the Corporation of York and Sir Lionel Pilkington, 1 Atk. 282, the plaintiffs there were in possession of the right of fishing upon the river Ouse for nine miles together, and had constantly exercised that right, and as this large jurisdiction entangled them with different lords of manors it would have been endless for the corporation to have brought actions at law. But where a question about a right of fishery is only between two lords of manors, neither of them can come into this court till the right is first tried at law."

This we consider as expressing the rule of law; the principle dictating the rule being the duty and necessity of affording a practical and efficient form of remedy for protection to persons and property founded in the very conception of government. 6 Ency. Law (2d Ed.) 972. If this case falls within the rule, the allowance of the proceeding is no infraction of the constitutional right of trial by jury, for that guaranty refers to, and is co-extensive only with, the common-law right then existing, and it was always a principle of the common law that the trial by jury must give way to an appeal to equity, when from the nature of the situation, the transaction to be investigated, and the relation of the parties to that transaction the ordinary proceeding at law would not answer sufficiently the purpose of administering justice. Boring v. Williams, 17 Ala. 510; Oelrich v. Spain, 15 Wall. (U. S.) 211-228, 21 L.Ed. 43; Cook v. Schmidt, 100 Ala. 582, 13 So. 686; 6 Ency. Law (2d Ed.) 972-974. It is the duty of affording an efficient and speedy and economical administration of justice which evoked and established the principle of jurisprudence under which a court of equity interferes to avoid a multiplicity of suits. This principle, then, is established by the application of reason to the circumstances of the particular case, and, of course, it can have no other limit than that of reason. The classification by the text-writers and courts of the instances in which a particular jurisdiction founded on a general principle has been exercised may be a guaranty of safety in following in their footsteps; but it is only a recognition of the controlling principle, and does not by any means restrict the principle itself.

The question here, then, is, what is the principle upon which equity interferes to avoid a multiplicity of suits? In determining this, it may be borne in mind that the jurisdiction is not to be invoked when the remedy at law is plain, adequate, and complete, and that no court has the right to infringe upon the wholesome doctrine of multifariousness which prevents a mingling in one suit of entirely distinct and separate causes of action between different parties. Subject to these restrictions, the principle and rule is that where numerous parties are jointly and severally claiming against one, or where one is claiming against many liable jointly or severally, and the same title or right of defense will...