Park v. Park

123 F.2d 370, 1941 U.S. App. LEXIS 2713
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedNovember 12, 1941
DocketNo. 10022
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 123 F.2d 370 (Park v. Park) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Park v. Park, 123 F.2d 370, 1941 U.S. App. LEXIS 2713 (5th Cir. 1941).

Opinion

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge.

The suit was by appellees against their guardian and his sureties to recover $13,-580.59,1 notwithstanding releases given him by them after their majority, and his discharge by judgments of the Court of Ordinary. The claim was that the releases and the discharges were procured by fraud.

Urging that the suit was a collateral attack upon the judgment of a probate court, defendants moved to dismiss it for want of jurisdiction. For their defenses to the merits, they set up; the releases and the judgments of the Court of Ordinary; specifically and fully denied the charges of fraud and concealment; and pleaded that the estate had been fully and fairly administered; that full and fair settlement upon a full and fair accounting had been made; and that this was not the Court nor the occasion to demand another accounting.

The motion to dismiss was denied, D.C., 37 F.Supp. 185, and upon defendant’s demand there was a trial to a jury, with a verdict and judgment for plaintiffs for $5,000. Defendants are here urging as reversible error, the denial of their motion to dismiss and the giving and refusal of charges, and insisting that the judgment [372]*372may not stand because the verdict was without support in the evidence. No attempt is made in the briefs of the parties to draw any distinction between the right of plaintiffs to maintain this kind of suit against Park, and their right to- maintain it against his sureties. We will therefore, since the judgment is to be reversed, not attempt to draw any, but will treat the suit as though it had been brought against Park alone, and the reversal will be without prejudice to the rights of the sureties if they are so minded to again present their motion to dismiss.

Treating the case as one brought against .Park, we cannot agree that denial of the motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction- was error. Neither the ground, that the suit was one to administer the guardianship and therefore exclusively one for the Court of Ordinary, nor the ground that the suit was a collateral attack upon the judgment of the state court, was well taken. There are some broad allegations and prayers in the petition which give color to appellant’s claim, that the suit is one for a full accounting and final settlement with the guardian and covers “exactly the function of the Court of Ordinary”, Robinson v. Georgia Bank & Trust Co., 5 Cir., 106 F.2d 944, 948, and that it is therefore not a suit maintainable in the federal court. Construed as a whole however, the pleading asks no more than was asked in Payne v. Hook, 7 Wall. 425, 19 L.Ed. 260; Arrowsmith v. Gleason, 129 U.S. 86, 101, 9 S.Ct. 237, 32 L.Ed. 630; Edenborn v. Wigton, 5 Cir., 74 F.2d 374 and cases cited therein. In short, paraphrasing what we said in the Edenborn case, the suit is not a suit “controlling, supervising or annulling proceedings of a st'ate court, it is a personal suit in which the federal court scrutinizing the conduct of defendant, will, if it finds that he has been guilty of fraud or imposition in obtaining the decree and the instruments of transfer or settlement he relies on, deprive him of the benefits of them and of any inequitable advantage he has derived under them.”

On the second ground, that 'the suit is one to set aside a judgment for intrinsic rather than extrinsic fraud, and therefore not maintainable, appellant stands no better. For putting aside the question whether the ruling of the Throckmorton case, United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U.S. 61, 25 L.Ed. 93, has not been sometimes too rigidly followed, in the face of Marshall v. Holmes, 141 U.S. 589, 12 S.Ct. 62, 35 L.Ed. 870; Cf. Publicker v. Shallcross, 3 Cir., 106 F.2d 949, 126 A.L.R. 386, the claim fails here because if there was any fraud in obtaining the judgments, it was fraud extrinsic of them. The judgment in the case of each ward was based on the release given by the ward and if there was fraud in obtaining the release, this fraud was certainly extrinsic to the judgments.

We think it clear however, that though the jurisdictional point is not well taken, the judgment must be reversed for errors in the submission to the jury. Of these one of the most fundamental and far reaching, was the submission of the issue of fraud. The suit was brought on allegations of actual fraud of their guardian, in concealing the true state of the affairs of his wards, for the purpose of obtaining releases from them and judgments discharging him. Appellants, in appropriate charges, requested the submission of the issue of fraud thus raised, and by objection to the main charge, sought to prevent the submission of the issue of constructive fraud, as the court charged it, “any act of omission or commission contrary to legal or equitable duty, to the injury of another, where actual fraud implies moral guilt, constructive fraud may exist where there is moral innocence.” Refusing defendants’ charges and overruling their objections to the main charge, the district judge, instead of submitting to the jury, the issue, the pleadings made, whether there was actual fraud in procuring the releases and the judgments, submitted the cause to them as in effect a suit for an accounting, liability depending not on fraud but upon the exact state of the accounts. Thus, the issue of the suit was made to turn not upon whether the jury found that their guardian had actually defrauded them but upon whether the jury found that there was money due the wards on an accounting, and this, wholly without regard to the bona tides or honest intent of the guardian in accounting to and settling with them. This, as we understand the law generally, will not do when the suit is, as here, not one in the proper court for an accounting but in another court to set aside the judgment of that proper court. Particularly will it not do in Georgia where the precise question has been ruled against plaintiff, Abercrombie v. Hair, 185 Ga. 728, 196 S.E. 447; in part interpreting and in part -distinguishing [373]*373Poullain v. Poullain, 76 Ga. 420, 4 S.E. 92, on which appellees rely.

Instead of charging upon constructive fraud as was done in the main charge appellants’ requested Charges 1, 6 and 14,2 or similar charges should have been given. For the same reason, that the suit was not one for an accounting, but to set aside releases and judgments for fraud, it was error too for the court to charge as it did, that when property or money is shown to have come into the custody of the guardian and an attack is made upon his guardianship or the management of the estate, it is incumbent upon him to show that it has been properly and legally expended or paid out and disbursed. Instead, appellants’ instruction No. 11,3 should have been given.

It was error too to submit over defendants’ objection, an issue of whether the monies, which had been deposited in the Griffin Bank and partly lost there through the bank’s failure, had been placed there as an investment, that is, a permanent loan of money.

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

Related

Baweja v. Roach
24 F. App'x 198 (Fourth Circuit, 2002)
Miller v. McNamara
66 A.2d 359 (Supreme Court of Connecticut, 1949)
Griffith v. Bank of New York
147 F.2d 899 (Second Circuit, 1945)
Bostwick v. Baldwin Drainage Dist.
133 F.2d 1 (Fifth Circuit, 1943)
Farrington v. Jacobs
132 F.2d 745 (Fifth Circuit, 1943)
The Maccabees v. City of North Chicago
125 F.2d 330 (Seventh Circuit, 1942)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
123 F.2d 370, 1941 U.S. App. LEXIS 2713, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/park-v-park-ca5-1941.