Court Opinion

ID: 9648447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:21:06.726408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:00.812961
License: Public Domain

Heher, J.
(dissenting in part). I would affirm the judgment of the Appellate Division.
Plaintiff’s complaint prayed, inter alia, for judgment fixing and determining her “marital status,” and declaring that *521she “is the sole and only legal wife of the defendant, John Joseph Untermann.”
The validity of the ceremonial marriage to Untermann ex necessitate depends upon the validity of the Nevada decree of April 15, 1929, purporting to dissolve her marriage to Harold Edward Cheney, who was then living; and there could not be a determination of plaintiff’s right to the relief thus sought without an adjudication of the legal sufficiency of the Nevada decree.
If the Nevada decree were valid, then the “unclean hands” doctrine would not bar a judgment establishing the validity of plaintiff’s ceremonial marriage to Untermann. E con-verso, if the Nevada decree is null and void, as found, and 1 concur in the finding, plaintiff cannot have judgment establishing as valid her ceremonial marriage to Untermann and, by the same token, her complaint must be dismissed.
And we are not concerned, I would suggest, with the legal consequences as to Untermann of the resolution of the issue thus tendered by plaintiff. The clean hands doctrine has reference to a party who, as actor, seeks a remedy he cannot have under the principle that “He that hath committed iniquity shall not have equity,” a universal rule “guiding and regulating the action of equity courts in their interposition on behalf of suitors for any and every purpose, and in their administration of any and every species of relief”; if the actor “has violated conscience, or good faith, or other equitable principle, in his prior conduct, then the doors of the court will be shut against him in limine; the court will refuse to interfere on his behalf, to acknowledge his right, or to award him any remedy.” Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (5th ed.) section 397. See Yeiser v. Rogers, 19 N. J. 284 (1955).
The judgment under review affords no relief to plaintiff; it could give none unless it found the Nevada decree valid. Nor does it give affirmative relief to Untermann, or to the eounterclaimant, who has not appealed from the dismissal of her counterclaim. It dismisses plaintiff’s complaint as ill-founded in law and in fact, because of the legal impedi*522ment to a lawful marriage between plaintiff and Untermann, a conclusion that necessarily involved the legal sufficiency of the Nevada decree.
For modification—Chief Justice Yanderbilt, and Justices Oliphant, Burling, Jacobs and Brennan—5.
Opposed—Justice Hehbr—1.