Steinman v. Clinchfield Coal Corp.

• Decision Date: 20 September 1917
• Citation: 93 S.E. 684
• Parties: STEINMAN. v. CLINCHFIELD COAL CORP.
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

93 S.E. 684

STEINMAN.

v.CLINCHFIELD COAL CORP.

Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Sept. 20, 1917.

Error to Circuit Court, Dickenson County.

Ejectment by A. J. Steinman against the Clinchfield Coal Corporation. There was a judgment for defendant, and plaintiff brings error. Affirmed.

Irvine & Stuart, of Big Stone Gap, for plaintiff in error.

Fulton & Vicars and Bond & Bruce, all of Wise, and Morison, Morison & Robertson, of Big Stone Gap, for defendant in error.

BURKS, J. A. J. Steinman brought an action of ejectment in the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Virginia against the Clinchfield Coal Corporation, to recover all of the bituminous and other coal, iron ore, and other minerals underlying a tract of 1, 000 acres of land in Dickenson county. The plaintiff offered in evidence the following chain of title: Deed from Philip Fleming to A. J. Steinman and J. D. Price, dated December 18, 1874, recorded December 21, 1874; deed from J. D. Price to A. J. Steinman, dated December 31, 1874, recorded November 4, 1875.

In order to avoid the necessity of tracing his title back to the commonwealth, the plaintiff relied upon Philip Fleming as the common source of title under which both he and the defendant claimed. The deed under which the defendant claimed title from Fleming was prior in point of date and delivery to the deed under which the plaintiff claimed, but the plaintiff claimed that he was entitled to recover as an innocent purchaser for value and without notice of such prior rights. In order to show that he was such innocent purchaser, he offered the following papers as links in the chain of the defendant's title: Three decrees in the case of Lipps against Collier, Philip Fleming, and others, dated respectively October 23, 1872, May 22, 1873, and April 6, 1874. The second of these decrees, recorded in the deed book of Wise county, in which county the land in controversy was then located, finds that a deed executed by Philip Fleming to James A. Collier, properly acknowledged, conveying the land in controversy, had been lost, and decrees that Collier shall hold the land free from all claims of Fleming and others, and that this decree shall be recorded and indexed in the deed book of Wise county, which was accordingly done more than a year prior to the conveyance from Fleming to A. J. Steinman and Price.

The plaintiff further offered in evidence sundry deeds to show a chain of title from Collier down to the defendant, which need not be here particularly recited.

The decrees above mentioned were rendered in a suit brought by Lipps against Collier and others to set aside a deed which Collier had made to a trustee for the benefit of his wife and to subject the land to the payment of a judgment in favor of Lipps against Collier. The plaintiff claims that he had neither notice nor knowledge of the suit, or of the decrees entered therein.

The original papers in this cause have been lost or destroyed, but sufficient appears to show that the plaintiff, Lipps, averred in his bill that Fleming had conveyed the land to Collier, but that the deed had been lost. This averment was apparently necessary in order to show that Collier was the owner of the land, and that it was liable to his judgment, and, in order that a purchaser at the sale might acquire title, Fleming was made a party defendant.

At the conclusion of the evidence, on the motion of the plaintiff, Steinman, the District Court directed the jury to return a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for the coal and underlying minerals in a tract of about 395 acres, which is the land in controversy in this suit. The jury returned their verdict accordingly, and the court entered judgment thereon in favor of the plaintiff. To this ac tion of the court the defendant, the Clinch-field Coal Corporation, excepted, and obtained a writ of error from the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. The Circuit Court of Appeals (213 Fed. 557, 130 C. C. A. 137) reversed the judgment of the District Court, and held that the decree in the Lipps suit was a decree for the recovery of land within the meaning of section 2510 of the Code of Virginia, and that the decree in the Lipps Case was properly recorded and indexed, and hence that Steinman was a purchaser with notice.

The case was argued at length in the Circuit Court of Appeals, both on a hearing and a rehearing, but the court on the rehearing adhered to its decision made on the original hearing, and remanded the cause to the District Court for a new trial. When the case came back to the District Court, the plaintiff suffered a nonsuit, and brought the present action of ejectment in the circuit court of Dickenson county.

On the trial of the case in Dickenson county, the parties waived a jury and submitted all matters of law and fact to the trial court for decision, and by agreement between counsel it was stipulated that the evidence in the case, and the only evidence, should be the same which was introduced by the respective parties in the case recently pending in the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Virginia, at Big Stone Gap, under the title of A. J. Steinman v. Clinchfield Coal Corporation et al., and that the printed records used on appeal in the last-mentioned case in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, together with a copy of the final opinion of said court in said cause, and of the mandate of said court, and the final order of the District Court which dismissed the cause, on motion of the plaintiff, should be placed in the hands of the court and used and considered by it as if the same evidence appearing in said record were reintroduced, and the same objections in all respects made to the said evidence as introduced by the respective parties thereto.

The circuit court of Dickenson county entered judgment for the defendant, the Clinch-field Coal Corporation. To that judgment this writ of error was awarded.

It was contended in the trial court, and is insisted upon with great earnestness in this court, that the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals was a final determination of the controversy in favor of the defendant, and that, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, the state courts are bound by the decision of the said federal court, and have no jurisdiction to overrule, reverse, or in any manner modify the same, and that, whether they have such jurisdiction or not, they are bound by the said decision of the United States court as a former adjudication of the question at issue by a court of competent jurisdiction between the same parties and upon the same issue. It was further in-sisted that, if this position be not correct, the case on its merits should be decided in favor of the defendant for the same reasons given by the Circuit Court of Appeals.

The defense set up by the Clinchfield Coal Corporation, that the judgment of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals settles the question at issue between the parties and is res judicata, cannot be sustained, for the simple reason that the judgment did not finally dispose of the issue between the parties, but remanded the case to the District Court "for further proceedings in accordance with the views herein expressed." The authorities uniformly agree that, in order for a judgment to constitute res judicata, it must be a final judgment in the case on the merits. Story's Eq. Pl. (4th Ed.) § 791; Yates v. Wilson, 86 Va. 625, 627, 10 S. E. 976; 23 Cyc. 1232; 24 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law (2d Ed.) 793. In the instant case there was no final judgment, but a remand of the case for a new trial, on Which the evidence might have been entirely different from that on the former trial. A reversal in a court of last resort, remanding a cause, cannot be set up as a bar to a subsequent action for the same cause.

"Unless a final judgment or decree is rendered in a suit, the proceedings in the same are never regarded as a bar to a subsequent action. Consequently, where the action was discontinued, or the plaintiff became nonsuit, or where from any other cause, except perhaps in case of a retraxit, no judgment or decree was rendered in the case, the proceedings are not conclusive." Aurora City v. West, 7 Wall. 82, 93, 19 L. Ed. 42, and cases cited; Omohundro v. Omohundro, 27 Grat. (68 Va.) 824; Chrisman v. Harman, 29 Grat. (70 Va.) 494, 26 Am. Rep. 387; Smith v. Blackwell, 31 Grat. (72 Va.) 291.

Closely akin to the doctrine of res judicata, however, is that of "the law of the case." It is sometimes treated under "res judicata, " and sometimes under "stare decisis"; but it occupies a distinct field of its own, though it is at times confused with one or the other of the other two. It is this doctrine of "the law of the case, " rather than that of res judicata, upon which the defendant relies.

The doctrine, briefly stated, is this: Where there have been two appeals in the same case, between the same parties, and the facts are the same, nothing decided on the first appeal can be re-examined on a second appeal. Right or wrong, it is binding on both the trial court and the appellate court, and is not subject to re-examination by either. For the purpose of that case, though only for that case, the decision on the first appeal is the law. It differs from res judicata, in that the conclusiveness of the first judgment is not dependent upon its finality. The first judgment is generally, if not universally, not final. The reason of the rule is twofold: First, after the rehearing period has passed, the appellate court has no power to change its judgment, and the mandate for retrial removes the case from its jurisdiction. Second, it is necessary to the orderly and effi cient administration of justice. It would greatly increase the labor of appellate courts and the costs to litigants if questions once considered and determined could be reopened on any subsequent appeal. The doctrine has been applied in many cases by this...