Southern Steel Co. v. Hopkins

• Decision Date: 29 January 1911
• Citation: 174 Ala. 465,57 So. 11
• Parties: SOUTHERN STEEL CO. v. HOPKINS ET AL.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

57 So. 11

174 Ala. 465

SOUTHERN STEEL CO. v. HOPKINS ET AL.

Supreme Court of Alabama

January 29, 1911

Rehearing Denied Dec. 21, 1911.

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

Bill by the Southern Steel Company against Wiley Hopkins administrator, and others. Decree for defendants, and complainant appeals. Affirmed.

See also, 157 Ala. 175, 47 So. 274, 20 L. R. A. (N. S.) 848, 131 Am. St. Rep. 20.

J. T Stokely, for appellant.

Stallings & Drennen, for appellees.

MAYFIELD J.

This is a suit in equity to enjoin the prosecution of 110 separate actions at law. The sole ground of equity jurisdiction upon which the suit is based is to prevent a multiplicity of suits. The separate actions at law were brought by the administrators of 110 unfortunate workmen, who lost their lives by an explosion in a coal mine. Each of these 110 actions was brought, under the employer's liability act, to recover damages for the wrongful death of the respective intestate; was brought against the same defendant, the complainant in this suit; and sought to recover on account of negligence in causing or allowing the explosion which killed the unfortunate workmen.

The prayer for relief is as follows: "Your orator further prays that your honor will grant unto your orator a preliminary writ of injunction, enjoining and restraining each and all of said parties defendant and their attorneys and successors from all further proceedings in said actions at law, or prosecuting the same in any manner, until the further orders of this court, and that your honor will proceed to hear and determine the question of the liability vel non of said Alabama Steel & Wire Company, in the premises, and, if there should prove to be any such liability, that your honor will further determine the extent thereof, and the manner and mode in which the same shall be prorated or paid."

This appeal, for the second time, brings up for our decision the equity of this bill, a full statement of the facts of which, and a discussion of the law involved, may be found in the reports of the case in 157 Ala. 175, 47 So. 274, 20 L. R. A. (N. S.) 848, 131 Am. St. Rep. 20.

The question of law involved in this suit is this: Has a court of equity jurisdiction to enjoin numerous tort actions, brought by different plaintiffs against the same defendant, when there is merely a community of interest in the questions of law and of fact involved, and no common title, no community of interest or of right, in the subject-matter? This question was decided in the affirmative by this court on the former appeal. After the cause was remanded, the complainant amended the bill, and other defendants demurred, and again raised the equity of the bill as last amended. The chancellor again sustained the demurrer, and from that decree the complainant again appeals to this court.

We regret the necessity of overruling our former decision, and recognize and appreciate the wisdom in the maxim, that "it is as important that the law be certain as that it be right;" yet it is not only our prerogative, but our duty, to overrule a former decision, when we are convinced that it is fundamentally wrong, both in theory and in practice.

There is a sharp and distinct conflict in the decisions of the various courts upon this question; but, after a careful examination and review of many of them, and of the text-books upon the subject, we are constrained to recede from the holding on the former appeal, and to follow that line of decisions and those text-books which deny equity jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits at law, in the absence of a common title, or of some community of right or interest, in the subject-matter among the several parties. To state the proposition differently, we now hold that a community of interest among the several parties in the questions of law and of fact involved is not sufficient to confer jurisdiction upon a court of equity to enjoin the several tort actions at law, though brought against the same defendant, and though each may depend upon the same state of facts.

Our statute (section 5965 of the Code) provides as follows: "The Supreme Court, in deciding each case, when there is a conflict between its existing opinion and any former ruling in the case, must be governed by what, in its opinion at the time, is law, without any regard to such former ruling on the law by it; but the right of third persons, acquired on the faith of the same former ruling, shall not be defeated or interfered with by or on account of any subsequent ruling."

The importance of this question of law and practice involved is such that we deem it proper to state, as briefly as we may, the reasons which have impelled us to overrule the former decision.

We have reached the conclusion that the law has been correctly settled, both in England and America, differently from that declared by this court in the former decision of this case. We think there is little doubt that the courts have been led astray upon this subject by following what Mr. Pomeroy stated in his valuable work on Equity Jurisprudence (2d Ed.) § 269. We recognize both the ability and the authority of Mr. Pomeroy as a writer upon equity jurisprudence; in fact, we concede, as we have often stated in our opinions, that he is probably the leading and the best authority upon this subject; but he is human, and must therefore sometimes err. Prior to this text of Mr. Pomeroy, there were, we are certain, few, if any, adjudicated cases which supported the text, or which would sustain the equity of a bill which rested solely upon the jurisdiction of equity to prevent a multiplicity of suits, when there was no common title, no community of interest or of right, in the subject-matter among the several individuals whose actions at law were sought to be enjoined.

It must be conceded, however, that there are a number of decisions, since the text, which support it; some of them extending the doctrine further, probably, than it was ever intended or supposed by Mr. Pomeroy. Chief among these is the decision of our own court in this case on the former appeal. Another is that of Whitlock v. Yazoo, 91 Miss. 779, 45 So. 861. These two cases have certainly extended the Pomeroy doctrine further than have any others, before or since their rendition.

Chief Justice McClellan, in the Turner Case, 135 Ala. 73, 33 So. 132, after devoting several pages of the opinion to the fallacy of the Pomeroy doctrine, which was followed and given effect to by this court on the former appeal, concluded as follows, which is quoted with approval from the Tribette Case, 70 Miss. 182, 12 So. 32, 19 L. R. A. 660, 35 Am. St. Rep. 642: "But we affirm, after careful examination and full consideration, that Pomeroy is not sustained in his 'conclusions,' stated in section 269 of his most valuable treatise, and the cases he cited do not maintain the proposition that mere community of interest 'in the questions of law and fact involved in the general controversy, or in the kind and form of relief demanded and obtained by or against each individual member of the numerous body,' is ground for the interposition of chancery to settle, in one suit, the several controversies. There is no such doctrine in the books, and the zeal of the learned and usually accurate writer mentioned, to maintain a theory, has betrayed him into error on this subject. It has so blinded him as to cause the confounding of distinct things in his view of this subject, to wit, joinder of parties, and avoidance of multiplicity of suits."

On the other hand, the opinion of Chief Justice Tyson, on the former appeal, referring to the same doctrine, quotes approvingly from another Mississippi case, as follows: "We think the doctrine announced by Pomeroy is sound, and clearly established by the best-considered modern cases." Chief Justice Tyson also states in his opinion that Tribette's Case was directly opposed to his views of the law, and to the other Mississippi cases quoted from by him, but that the Turner Case was not so opposed, except as to certain dicta therein.

In this last statement as to the Turner Case, we think the opinion in the former case is in error. It is certain that the Turner Case followed the Tribette Case, and gave sanction to every doctrine announced therein. Chief Justice McClellan, in Turner's Case, referring to the doctrine that, in order for a court of equity to enjoin a multiplicity of actions at law, there must be a common title to, or common interest in, the subject-matter involved, and that a mere common interest in a question of law is not sufficient, states that, "this position is nowhere better nor more fully stated than by Campbell, C.J., in Tribette's Case, * * * and as the opinion treats fully of Mr. Pomeroy's position, and demonstrates its fallacy, we quote it in part," etc., and then proceeds to quote several pages from the opinion in Tribette's Case.

The opinion in the Turner Case thus shows on its face that Chief Justice McClellan therein quoted more than half of Chief Justice Campbell's opinion in the Tribette Case. This, we think, makes it certain that if the decision in the Tribette Case was in conflict with Chief Justice Tyson's opinion it was unquestionably in conflict with the decision in Turner's Case which not only followed the decision in Tribette's Case, but literally quoted pages of it, and thus expressly adopted it.

Chief Justice McClellan, in the Turner Case, says: "This court has never undertaken to define the jurisdiction of equity to prevent a multiplicity of suits, nor to lay down general principles from which the several categories of cases in which that jurisdiction may be invoked is possible of statement. All that has been decided...