Thomson v. Butler

• Decision Date: 08 July 1943
• Docket Number: No. 12435.,12435.
• Citation: 136 F.2d 644
• Parties: THOMSON et al. v. BUTLER et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

136 F.2d 644 (1943)

THOMSON et al. v. BUTLER et al.

No. 12435.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

June 9, 1943.

Rehearing Denied July 8, 1943.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

W. H. H. Piatt, of Kansas City, Mo., for appellants.

Charles E. Whittaker, of Kansas City, Mo. (W. T. Bellamy, Perry G. Storts, and Homer E. Rich, all of Marshall, Mo., and Watson, Ess, Groner, Barnett & Whittaker, of Kansas City, Mo., on the brief), for appellees.

Before GARDNER, JOHNSEN, and RIDDICK, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs, who were some of the heirs at law of Laura E. Saltonstall, deceased, brought suit in federal court to annul a judgment of a state circuit court of Missouri, which upheld the validity of a will of the decedent,¹ and to enjoin the devisees and legatees from claiming any part of the estate under such will and judgment.

Federal jurisdiction was claimed to exist upon two separate grounds: (1) That there was diversity of citizenship, and (2) that the suit was in any event one arising under the Constitution of the United States.² The substance of the constitutional ground alleged was that the state court judgment operated to deprive plaintiffs of their inheritance rights in the decedent's estate without due process of law, in that (a) the will was a forgery and its probate had been obtained by perjured testimony and other fraud perpetrated by the devisees and legatees upon the state court, and (b) that none of the present plaintiffs had been served with summons or other valid process in the will-contest proceeding, or had any notice thereof, so as to give them their day in court.³

The trial court held that neither the necessary diversity of citizenship nor a federal question was present, and, on motion of defendants, the suit was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The trial court properly held that the necessary diversity of citizenship was lacking to give a federal court jurisdiction on that ground. Frank Bush, one of the legatees under the will, was a resident of the same state as some of the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs apparently had sought to escape this difficulty by not making him a party to the suit. Under the law of Missouri, however, all devisees and legatees are necessary parties to a will contest. Eddie v. Parke's Executor, 31 Mo. 513; Wells v. Wells, 144 Mo. 198, 45 S.W. 1095; Parke v. Smith, Mo.Sup., 211 S.W. 62; Harper v. Hudgings, Mo.Sup., 211 S.W. 63. On the same ground they equally are necessary parties to any suit in equity to annul a judgment by which the validity of a will has been established.

When the defect in necessary parties was pointed out to the trial court, it gave plaintiffs leave to bring in all the devisees and legatees who had not originally been made defendants. Frank Bush thereafter entered his voluntary appearance as a defendant, and plaintiffs admitted that he was a resident of the same state as some of the plaintiffs. Since all of the parties on one side of the controversy were not citizens of different states from all of the parties on the other side, the court necessarily was obliged to hold that it had no jurisdiction of the suit on the basis of diversity of citizenship. City of Indianapolis v. Chase National Bank of City of New York, 314 U.S. 63, 69, 62 S. Ct. 15, 17, 86 L.Ed. 47; Treinies v. Sunshine Mining Co., 308 U.S. 66, 71, 60 S. Ct. 44, 84 L.Ed. 85; De Hanas v. Cortez-King Brand Mines Co., 8 Cir., 26 F.2d 233, certiorari denied 278 U.S. 635, 49 S.Ct. 32, 73 L.Ed. 552.

Plaintiffs argue that the trial court erred in allowing Frank Bush to enter his appearance as a defendant, because he had shortly previously agreed to join with them as a party plaintiff and had in fact signed and filed an appearance asking to be made a co-plaintiff. But Frank Bush had no status or capacity under Missouri law to attack the validity of the will or the proceedings by which it was established, and so could not be a proper party plaintiff. He was not an heir at law of the decedent, but was a son of her sister, who was living at the time the will was originally admitted to probate in the probate court. His mother had died when this suit was instituted, but, under Missouri law, her right to contest the validity of the will, after its admission to probate in her lifetime, could not descend to her heirs at law.

The Supreme Court of Missouri has held that the interest which entitles a person to contest a will under section 538, Mo.Rev.St.1939, Mo.R.S.A. § 538, must exist at the time of the admission of the will to probate in the probate court; that the right to contest accrues, in legal effect, from the date of such probate; that after its accrual it constitutes a wholly personal right and is neither assignable nor descendable; and that it does not survive the death of the party in whose favor it has thus accrued. Campbell v. St. Louis Union Trust Co., 346 Mo. 200, 139 S.W. 2d 935, 129 A.L.R. 316. The same principles necessarily are applicable to the derivative right to maintain a suit in equity to annul a judgment establishing the validity of a will. Where there is no status or capacity to contest the will itself, there manifestly can be none to maintain a suit in equity to annul a judgment establishing its validity.

It is clear, therefore, that Frank Bush was not and could not be a proper party plaintiff in the present suit, under Missouri law. On the other hand, unless and until he renounced all his rights under the will, he was required to be made a party to the litigation, and his interest, by legal imputation, was necessarily that of a defendant. For purposes of testing the jurisdiction of a federal court on the basis of diversity of citizenship, it is immaterial how the parties may have been designated in the pleadings, since the court must align them for jurisdictional purposes on the basis of their actual legal interests and the apparent results to them, if the object sought to be accomplished by the litigation is successful. City of Indianapolis v. Chase National Bank of City of New York, 314 U.S. 63, 69, 62 S.Ct. 15, 17, 86 L.Ed. 47; Thomas v. Anderson, 8 Cir., 223 F. 41, 138 C.C.A. 405. Plaintiffs accordingly are unable to contend that the trial court erred or abused its discretion in permitting Frank Bush to enter his appearance as a party defendant and to resist their attack upon the state court judgment.

We must hold, also, that the trial court was correct in declaring that it had no jurisdiction of plaintiffs' suit on the basis of a federal question being involved. Whether the will forgery and the perjury and other fraud, claimed to have been perpetrated by the proponents in the state court proceeding, would, if established, constitute sufficient grounds for annulling a judgment generally, in equity, there is no occasion for us to consider, because, even if they could, they present no question here arising under the Constitution of the United States, as plaintiffs contend.

The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a guarantee against the use or results of perjury or fraud by parties to private litigation in state courts, uncountenanced by the general standards and processes of the state court system, nor does it afford a constitutional basis for relief in the federal courts from a judgment in such litigation obtained by these means. The rule recognized in Pyle v. State of Kansas, 317 U.S. 213, 63 S.Ct. 177, 87 L. Ed. ___; Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U.S. 103, 55 S.Ct. 340, 79 L.Ed. 791, 98 A.L.R. 406, and other cases, on which plaintiffs rely, has application only to public litigation in which authorities of the State, with responsibility for the litigation, have committed or countenanced a fraud or fundamental unfairness or other pollution of the judicial process, which has entered into a deprivation of life, liberty or property by the State. There is no violation of the Fourteenth Amendment in private litigation merely because the result is erroneous or unjust or has been achieved by improper practices on the part of one of the litigants, where the State's judicial processes are such as, on the basis of recognized principles, have afforded the parties a fair opportunity for hearing and determination by the court. Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302...