Buford v. Strother

10 F. 406
CourtUnited States Circuit Court
DecidedNovember 15, 1881
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 10 F. 406 (Buford v. Strother) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Circuit Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Buford v. Strother, 10 F. 406 (uscirct 1881).

Opinion

Love, D. J.

The foregoing cases are now before us upon motions to remand the same to the state courts from which they were brought into this court. The motions to remand-are all placed by counsel upon the same general grounds. It is insisted as to each of these cases that it is a proceeding supplemental to the original cause out of which it grew, and being a mere appendage to the judgment rendered in the original case it cannot be separated from the same and brought for adjudication here. These several motions may therefore be considered together.

[407]*407Shore is no question of jurisdiction in any of these cases, as far as citizenship and the amount involved are concerned.

The first two causes are proceedings by garnishment. The plaintiffs in these cases obtained judgments against the defendants in the state court, caused certain parties to be garnished, and having taken issue upon the answers of the garnishees, the plaintiff removed the issues thus made for determination into this court. The original defendant and the garnishees now move to remand.

In the third case the plaintiff, a citizen of Wisconsin, obtained a judgment in the state court against an Iowa corporation, and having failed to obtain satisfaction of the judgment he seeks by this action to make the present defendants, who are stockholders in the corporation, liable, in pursuance of chapter 181, title 9, of the Code of Iowa. The plaintiff in the present action against the defendants, one of whom is a director and the other a stockholder in the corporation, sets out his judgment and the return of execution nulla bona; charges the defendants with certain alleged frauds to his injury within the provisions of the statute; and prays judgment for his damages. The plaintiff caused the proceedings against the stockholders to be removed into this court. The defendants move to remand to the state court.

What is the true principle applicable to this class of removal cases ? By what rule or criterion may we determine whether or not a proceeding which is merely auxiliary to the main judgment or decree may be transferred from the state to the federal court ? It is idle to say that a supplemental proceeding cannot be removed because it is an appendage or sequence of the original suit. This is, at best, but reasoning in a circle. It is as if one were to affirm that a supplemental proceeding cannot be removed because it is a supplemental proceeding. It is, in fact, substituting one form of words for another form of words. We must, if possible, find some other principle to guide our judgment in such cases. It seems to me that the true principle is this: Where the supplemental proceeding is in its character a mere mode of execution or of relief, inseparably connected with the original judgment or decree, it cannot be removed, notwithstanding the fact that some new controversy or issue between the plaintiff in the original action and a new party may arise out of the proceeding. But where the supplemental proceeding is not merely a mode of execution or relief, but where it, in fact, involves an independent controversy with some new and different party, it may be removed into the federal court; always, of course, assuming that [408]*408otherwise the- proper jurisdictional facts exist. Every -court must,, in the nature of things, have the right, as well as the power, to carry its own judgments into execution. To take from any court the prerogative of executing its own judgments by proper process or by supplemental proceedings, when necessary, would be to cripple its jurisdiction in a most essential matter. It would, therefore, be difficult to persuade us that congress meant by the provision in the act of 1875 for the removal of “suits of a civil nature” to authorize the transfer of controversies growing out of- mere modes of execution and relief, thus directly interfering with the state courts in the execution of their own judgments. It is not in this sense that the words “suits of a civil nature” are ordinarily used.

Now, the process of garnishment after judgment is clearly a mode of execution. Its purpose is to obtain satisfaction of the judgment out of the debtor’s effects which may be in a third person’s hands. The garnishment, therefore, is inseparably connected with the judgment. If money is realized it is to be. applied to the satisfaction of the judgment. Suppose that an issue, taken upon the garnishee’s answer, should be removed to the federal court, (the original case remaining, as it must remain, in the state court,) and suppose the federal court should deliver judgment against the garnishee, and by execution or otherwise the money should be collected, how could the feáeral court enter satisfaction, the judgment not, being under its control ? We see in this the embarrassment that must arise from the attempt to separate the garnishment proceeeding from the judgment, the latter remaining in one court and the former carried to another and different court.

This branch of the rule'is clearly illustrated by the ease of Webber v. Humphreys, 5 Dillon, 223. The motion in that case was manifestly a mode of execution. The plaintiff had a judgment against a Missouri corporation, and the statute of Missouri provided substantially that upon a return of nulla bona the judgment creditor might, by motion, with due notice, obtain an order from the court for execution against a* stockholder to an amount .equal to the balance of his unpaid stock. Here the unpaid stock is treated as assets belonging to the corporation, and the statute provides the judgment creditor with a mode of execution to reach such assets. It was held by the circuit court for the district of Missouri that the motion could 'not be transferred from the state to the federal court, notwithstanding the fact that theré was a n6w controversy between the plaintiff and a new and different party.

[409]*409The other branch of the rale, that there can be no removal where the supplemental proceeding is a mode of rei/e/insoparabiy connected with the original judgment, is illustrated by the case of Chapman v. Barger, 4 Dillon, 557. In this case it was held that the proceeding under the occupying claimant law, for the value of improvements after judgment in ejectment, cannot be removed to the federal court. In this class of cases the statute of Iowa provides a mode of relief after judgment for the occupying claimant. Upon the filing of his petition the execution of the original judgment is to be suspended. The value of the improvements is to be ascertained, and also the value of the land aside from the improvements. The plaintiff in the main action may thereupon pay the appraised value of the improvements and take the property. If the plaintiff fail to do this after a reasonable time to be fixed by the court, the defendant may take the property upon paying the value of the land aside from the improvements, etc. Now it is obvious that this relief is inseparably connected with the judgment in the main action. A court not having the judgment in the main action under its control, could not give to the parties the full measure of relief provided by the statute; for supposing the owner of the land should pay for the improvements, he would be entitled to an execution to put him in possession of the property, and a writ of possession could issue only upon the judgment in ejectment.

It is obvious, therefore, that the motion to remand the first two cases above named must be sustained.

As to the third case, it stands upon wholly different ground.

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Bluebook (online)
10 F. 406, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/buford-v-strother-uscirct-1881.