Fuller v. Aylesworth

75 F. 694, 21 C.C.A. 505, 1896 U.S. App. LEXIS 2063
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJuly 8, 1896
DocketNo. 408
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 75 F. 694 (Fuller v. Aylesworth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fuller v. Aylesworth, 75 F. 694, 21 C.C.A. 505, 1896 U.S. App. LEXIS 2063 (6th Cir. 1896).

Opinion

TAFT, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts). Section 1000 of the Revised Statutes of the United States makes the following provision for supersedeas bonds:

“Every justice or judge signing a citation on any writ of error, shall except in cases brought up by the United States or by direction of any department of the government, take good and sufficient security that the plaintiff in error or the appellant shall prosecute his writ or appeal to effect, and [698]*698if he fail to make this plea- good, shall answer all damages and costs, where the writ is a supersedeas and stays execution, or all costs only where it is not a supersedeas as aforesaid.”

Rule 29 of the supreme court (3 Sup. Ot. xvi.), adopted to prescribe the manner of carrying out the foregoing section, is as follows:

“Supersedeas bonds in the circuit courts must be taken, with good and sufficient security, that the plaintiff in error or appellant shall prosecuté his writ or appeal to effect, and answer all damages and costs if he fail to make his plea good. Such indemnity, where the judgment or decree is for the recovery of money not otherwise secured, must be for the whole amount of the judgment or decree including just damages for delay, and costs and interest on the appeal; but in all suits where the property, in controversy necessarily follows the suit, as in real actions, replevin, and in suits on mortgages, or where the property is in the custody of the marshal under admiralty process as in case of capture or seizure, or where the proceeds thereof, or a bond for the value thereof, is in the custody of the court, indemnity in all such cases is only required in an amount sufficient to secure the sum recovered for the use and detention of the property and the costs of the suit, and just damages for delay and costs and interest on the appeals.”

The main controversy in this case is whether the judgment against Gratiot county which was superseded was “a judgment for the recovery of money not otherwise secured.” If it was, then clearly the bond taken was in proper form, and rendered the sureties liable for the whole amount of the judgment in the circuit court. It is strenuously urged by counsel for the plaintiffs in error that the judgment is in reality not for money, but only for an order of mandamus on county officers to make a levy upon lands in'certain specified townships; that the county is in no sense responsible as a debt- or for the amount established to be due, and that the only amount recoverable under the statute, and embraced by a lawful supersedeas bond, is for costs and damages for delay, which are not shown. It is settled by a long line of decisions of the supreme court that the circuit courts of the United States have no jurisdiction to consider and decide a suit for a mandamus to compel the discharge of a statutory or other duty except for the purpose of enforcing their judgments previously rendered. The result was reached by a construction of the eleventh and the fourteenth sections of the judiciary act, which now appear in the Revised Statutes as sections 629 and 716. The former confers on circuit * courts, original jurisdiction “of all suits of a civil nature at common law,” and the latter provides “that such courts shall have power to issue all writs not specifically provided for by statute, which may be necessary for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions, and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” The supreme court was of opinion that while, if the eleventh section of the judiciary act was not accompanied by the fourteenth, a mandamus proceeding might be properly regarded as a suit of a civil nature at common law, the presence of section 14 in the same act, providing for the issuance of such a writ as an ancillary writ, indicated that the words of section 11 were to be given a narrower construction, and one which would not include suits in mandamus. Hence the uniform ruling of the supreme court has been that, even in states [699]*699where by statute it is specifically provided that a mandamus may he issued against public officers to levy a tax to pay a public debt: without other proceeding than an application for mandamus and a hearing thereon, such a statute does not apply to a circuit court of the United Slates, and that in those courts a judgment against the corporation liable for the debt must be rendered before a mandamus will issue. Bath Co. v. Amy, 33 Wall. 244; Graham v. Norton, 35 Wall. 427; County of Greene v. Daniel, 102 U. S. 187-195; Davenport v. County of Dodge, 105 U. S. 237; Rosenbaum v. Bauer, 120 U. S. 450, 7 Sup. Ct. 633. It follows that the writ of mandamus in the circuit courts is never an independent suit, as it is in many states and in England, hut it is only “a proceeding ancillary to tiie judgment which gives the jurisdiction, and when issued becomes a substitute for the ordinary process of execution to enforce the payment of the same as provided in the contract.” Riggs v. Johnson Co., 6 Wall. 166, 198. In County of Greene v. Daniel, 102 U. S. 187, 195, it is said to he in the nature of an execution to carry the judgment into effect. In Rosenbaum v. Bauer, 120 U. S. 450, 7 Sup. Ct. 635, the court said: “The issue of the mandamus is an award of execution on the judgment, and is a proceeding necessary to complete the jurisdiction exercised by rendering the judgment.” The result is that in the circuit courts of the United States there must he a judgment for the recovery of money before there can be a mandamus to levy a tax to pay it, and that the mandamus is only a form of executing the judgment. It was in obedience to this requirement that the plaintiff: sought and obtained his judgment on the drain warrants. It was a judgment against the county for the recovery of the money, and the recovery of the money was “not otherwise secured” than by the judgment itself. There was no property in the custody of the court, and none under any lien which this proceeding was brought to enforce and foreclose. Eor these reasons we think the judgment was in the class referred to in rule 29 of the supreme court, in which the bond required to make the writ of error a supersedeas must be conditioned upon the payment of the amount of the judgment.

But it is vigorously pressed upon us that the debt for which the judgment was rendered was not the debt of the county, hut that of the owners of certain lands in three townships, which were benefited by two ditches, it is true that the county did not obligati* itself in terms to pay these warrants, though they were drawn and approved by its officers; but the effect of Mr. Justice Brown’s opinion and judgment in the original suit (43 Fed. 350) was that by law it was the duty of the county to collect the tax upon these lands, and to pay the warrants out of the fund thus created; that, as then* was no other corporate or quasi corporate body to represent the persons whose lands were benefited, the county was evidently intended by the law to he their representative, and, therefore, that the county was the proper defendant, as trustee and representative of the real debtors, against which a judgment might he entered as the essential foundation for a, mandamus proceeding to enforce the collection of the proper taxes. Mr.

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Bluebook (online)
75 F. 694, 21 C.C.A. 505, 1896 U.S. App. LEXIS 2063, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fuller-v-aylesworth-ca6-1896.