Court Opinion

ID: 9826790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 16:39:02.647591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:50:03.833721
License: Public Domain

ON Petition to Reheau.
Counsel for appellees have petitionéd the court for a rehearing, insisting that the former opinion filed on March 5, 1940', in effect held the judgment of the probate court of Idaho void and of no effect without any pleading’ filed by the receiver seeking such relief. By the bill and amended bill of the receiver it is alleged that the defendant E. Mowbray Davidson, the Idaho administrator, claimed the right to administer upon the Tennessee assets under a proceeding in the probate court of that State undertaking to vest title to the securities in E. Mowbray .Davidson as legatee under the will. It' is further alleged that said Idaho probate proceedings had been “closed” and that the said administrator had committed a devastavit. The prayer and purpose of the bill was to assert a lien as authorized by statute upon the Tennessee assets.
*718While, under the authorities to be hereafter cited, we do not think the judgment of the Idaho Probate Court operated as res ad judicata in respect to the claim of the receiver since the claim was not mentioned in the inventory and report of the Idaho administrator nor mentioned or considered in the decree of distribution, we think the allegations referred to are sufficient to indicate that the receiver intended to challenge the validity of the Idaho judgment insofar as it purported to vest title to the Tennessee assets in the legatee under the will. No attack is made upon the judgment because of accident, fraud on mistake, the receiver’s insistence being, as we understand, that since he was not a party to the Idaho proceedings no adjudication by the court could operate to cut off his right to subject the Tennessee assets to the payment of the Bank’s claim.
We pointed out in our former opinion that the receiver filéd no claim until after the decree of distribution had been passed. It may be conceded that if the receiver had prosecuted a claim' under the laws of the State of Idaho he would have been bound by the adjudication of the courts of that State involving the claim now asserted. Since he did not pursue that remedy the question is, as we endeavored to point out, one involving a conflict of laws and not an attack upon a judgment of the courts of a sister state.
The basis of the rule that a judgment regular upon its face cannot be attacked collaterally is that there has been an adjudication of the question between the parties and where it appears 'that a party interested was not before the court, such party may be heard upon questions of both law and fact as fully as though no judgment had been rendered. It is said that to rule otherwise would-*719permit a man to be condemned unheard, or his property taken without notice, which of course is contrary to the plainest principles of law or justice. Beatty v. Davenport, 45 Wash. 555, 559, 88 P. 1109, 122 Am. St. Rep. 937, 13 Ann. Cas. 585.
It is next insisted that the court went out of the record in holding that the Idaho judgment had no extra-territorial force, there Being no proof in the record to this effect. The record reflects the facts in reference to the parties before the court in that proceeding and the questions involved as well as the location of assets within the State of Tennessee at the time of the death of the testator. Prom these facts we determine that the receiver had a right to invoke the provisions of the Tennessee statute for the benefit and protection of domestic creditors.
We are unable to agree with the insistence ably pressed by counsel for petitioner that the Idaho statute and the proceedings in that State operate to cut off this right and are constrained to adhere to our original opinion in this respect. It results that the petition to rehear is denied.
Portrnm and Ailor, JJ., concur.