Moffett v. Commerce Trust Co.

87 F. Supp. 438
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Missouri
DecidedNovember 30, 1940
DocketNo. 4581
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 87 F. Supp. 438 (Moffett v. Commerce Trust Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Moffett v. Commerce Trust Co., 87 F. Supp. 438 (W.D. Mo. 1940).

Opinion

REEVES, Chief Judge.

Pursuant to the opinion in the above case, D.C., 75 F.Supp. 303, and the order dismissing plaintiff’s First Amended Complaint in accordance with said opinion, the plaintiff was granted leave to file and has filed her Second Amended Complaint. The several defendants have filed motions to dismiss on various grounds, including the one that the Second Amended Complaint bears such similarity to the complaint dismissed as to bring said Second Amended Complaint under the ban of the opinion and order above mentioned.

An examination of the Second Amended Complaint fully sustains the defendants in their contention. However; there are other matters that should be discussed before a ruling is finally made on the several motions to dismiss. The Second Amended Complaint covers 26 pages of typewritten matter. In substance it is alleged that the defendants entered into a conspiracy to deprive the plaintiff and others of rights, privileges and immunities secured to them by the United States Constitution and laws, and actually committed the wrongs for which the conspiracy was formed, and that by reason thereof said defendants became liable to the plaintiff and to others for such wrongs and consequent damages, perforce sections 43, 47 and 48, Title 8 U.S.C.A., now much condensed in new section 1343, Title 28 U.S.C.A., relating to the subject of civil rights.

The new section substantially embodies most of the provisions mentioned by the plaintiff, in her complaint, viz., sections 41, 42, 43, 47 and 48. In effect, these sections, or the current section creates causes of action and prescribes procedure for vindication in the national courts (original jurisdiction having been conferred by another section) for a suitor, “(1) To recover damages for injury to his person or property, or because of the deprivation of any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States, by any act done in furtherance of any conspiracy mentioned (emphasis mine) m section 47 of title 8; * * * (3) To redress the deprivation, under color of any State law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any right, privilege or immunity (emphasis mine) secured by the Constitution of the United States or by any Act of Congress providing for equal rights of citizens or of all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Plaintiff asserts that she and others were the victims of a conspiracy and that such conspiracy began many years ago and is still continuing. The plaintiff has enumerated a large number of alleged overt acts on the part of the alleged conspirators which she says caused damages to her or' to those under whom she claims, and, at the conclusion of her complaint, she asks an aggregate sum of money for the various and sundry damages accruing, as she claims, by reason of said large number of overt acts.

In drawing the Second Amended Complaint able counsel for plaintiff has sought to avoid the reasoning and conclusions of the opinion filed with the order dismissing the First Amended Complaint. Counsel did this by alleging that, in the several court proceedings used by the defendants for the deprivation of plaintiff’s rights, the judge, in each instance, purposely and intentionally made orders and entered decrees violative of the rights of plaintiff and those under whom she claims.

These matters, with others, will be, noticed and discussed in this memorandum opinion.

1. In examining the various overt acts set forth in the complaint one is convinced that in each and every instance the plaintiff enjoyed the full and complete opportunity to have a fair and an unprejudiced adjudication of her rights. Undoubtedly she could 'have made the same proof in the several court oroceedings mentioned in. [441]*441her complaint that she now proposes to make in this court. Her challenge to the validity of the acts of an Acting Probate Judge in Kansas City is insufficient for the reason that public policy would validate the acts of even a pretender or a de facto public official. Moreover, the orders complained against were made in November and December, 1928.

If the statutes were void, as now claimed by plaintiff, a challenge to their validity could have been made in a proper court proceeding. It is to be noted that the plaintiff alleges unlawful acts on the part of two officers in Missouri, two officers in Kansas, and, apparently, unnumbered officers in Oklahoma. In addition, she says that the administrator of one of the involved estates was in fact an officer of the State of Missouri, and that, in like manner, the ancillary administrator in the State of Kansas.

In each and every instance plaintiff had 'her immediate remedy either through the courts of Kansas, Missouri, or Oklahoma, or, on certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. By her averments she indicates that certiorari was denied because she had not tendered a federal question. If discrimination and oppression were made and practiced upon the plaintiff, unquestionábly the Supreme Court of the United States would have taken cognizance of the facts if the same had been presented.

In a portion of plaintiff’s voluminous complaint she alleges coercion and duress. These averments are not made as being pursuant to a conspiracy, but as -acts of the individual defendants which she says amounted to coercion and duress, and that she yielded to a course of action involuntarily.

Again, the courts were then open to the plaintiff to have secured a vindication of her rights and a redress of her grievance. The purport of plaintiff’s complaint is to seek from the federal courts a policing of the state courts. In one part of her complaint, in referring to one of the judges in Kansas, she used this language, “that he willfully, intentionally and purposefully discriminated against Thomas S. Moffett and plaintiff.” These are characteristic averments and are followed by statement of facts which amount to no more than that the judge had decided the case against the plaintiff. She has many cases still pending in the courts of Missouri, Kansas and probably Oklahoma. It would seem that, m pending cases, the plaintiff can obtain all of the relief she seeks here. Practically all of the matters complained against by plaintiff occurred more than 20 years ago. To entertain this complaint would be to condemn judges and other public officers of three great states as being delinquent in the performance of their duties.

2. As pointed out in the opinion heretofore filed and cited above, the statutory enactments relied upon by the plaintiff comprehend state, and not individual, action. It was the object of these enactments to bring about the proper enforcement of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It was for this reason, doubtless, that plaintiff’s counsel, on each alleged overt act, endeavored to involve state officials, namely, judges, in the wrongdoing. The averments, however, were insufficient for the purpose.

In an important case, such as this, involving public officials, the averments of the complaint, as in cases of fraud, should not be mere conclusions of the pleader, but must state facts from which the conclusion is inevitably drawn that the state official did, in fact, use 'his office for the sole object or purpose of depriving the plaintiff of her constitutional rights.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Smith v. Jennings
148 F. Supp. 641 (W.D. Michigan, 1957)
Dyer v. Kazuhisa Abe
138 F. Supp. 220 (D. Hawaii, 1956)
Moffett v. Commerce Trust Company
283 S.W.2d 591 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1955)
McGuire v. Todd
198 F.2d 60 (Fifth Circuit, 1952)
Shemaitis v. Froemke
189 F.2d 963 (Seventh Circuit, 1951)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
87 F. Supp. 438, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/moffett-v-commerce-trust-co-mowd-1940.