State v. Woodruff

• Decision Date: 15 December 1902
• Citation: 81 Miss. 456,33 So. 78
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE OF MISSISSIPPI ET AL. v. AMOS WOODRUFF ET AL

33 So. 78

81 Miss. 456

STATE OF MISSISSIPPI ET AL. v. AMOS WOODRUFF ET AL

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 15, 1902

October 1902

FROM the chancery court of, first district, Hinds county HON HENRY C. CONN, Chancellor.

Woodruff and others, appellees, were complainants in the court below the State of Mississippi and others, appellants, were defendants there. The object of the suit was to enforce a lien for several hundred thousand dollars on a large quantity of lands in the Yazoo and Mississippi Delta, the complainants claiming to be the owners of district No. 1 levee bonds issued under laws 1871, pp. 1-57.

The case had twice before been in the state supreme court and once in the supreme court of the United States, and the decisions thus made are reported, Woodruff v. State, 66 Miss. 298; Woodruff v. State, 77 Miss. 68; Woodruff v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 291. The facts are fully stated in the last report of the case, 77 Miss. 68, to which reference is made. After the case had been to the supreme court of the state (66 Miss. 298), it was thence carried to the supreme court of the United States (162 U.S. 291), where it was remanded to the state supreme court, and the state supreme court, on its second hearing there (77 Miss. 68), remanded the cause to the state chancery court, the court of original jurisdiction. When the case was returned to the Chancery court the complainants filed an amended bill, in which they attacked the opinion and judgment of the state supreme court, the one last made (77 Miss. 68), charging that the opinion and judgment deprived complainants of property without due process of law, denied them the equal protection of the law, and impaired their contract rights; the amended bill made new parties defendant, averring that these parties claimed an interest in the lands in controversy, showing that some of the new defendants had acquired, pending the suit, the interest of designated original defendants, but it did not show how or when other of the new defendants acquired the interest in the land which it was averred they were claiming.

All the defendants demurred to the amended bill, the new ones relying therein especially upon the statute of limitations, and defendants filed special demurrers to that part of the same which assailed the opinion and judgment of the supreme court in the case. The court below overruled the general demurrers, but sustained the special ones. The defendants appealed to the supreme court from the decree overruling the general demurrers, and the complainants prosecuted a cross-appeal from the decree sustaining the special demurrers.

Affirmed.

Frank Johnston, Mayes & Harris and Mc Willie & Thompson, for appellants and cross-appellees.

Green & Green, for appellees and cross-appellants.

Argued orally by T. A. Mc Willie for appellants, and by Marcellus Green for appellees.

OPINION

WILLIAMSON, Special Judge.^[*]

The amended bill, with the several exhibits filed as a part thereof, meets the ground of objection to the original bill sustained by this court on the former appeal, and furnishes a sufficiently definite description of the lands and the amount of taxes due thereon to the levee board No. 1 to require an answer from the defendants.

All the other grounds of the general demurrers filed by the defendants to the amended bill are the same grounds laid in the demurrer to the original bill and were passed on by this court in the opinion and judgment rendered on the former appeal of this case. We have carefully reconsidered that opinion and find no reason to modify it. The principles of law therein announced must govern the parties litigant and the lower court in the further progress of this cause.

It is charged in the amended bill that since the original bill was filed the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad Co. has been consolidated with the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Co., and the interest in the lands described in the amended bill conveyed to the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad Co. has become that of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Co., and that the Illinois Central Railroad Co., The Union Trust Co., The United States Trust Co., The Delta Development Co., Edward H. Pardee and Albert Crolius each claim to have some interest in...