Court Opinion

ID: 9834595
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 01:07:33.714125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:35.122850
License: Public Domain

On petition for rehearing.
The petition to rehear raises the question that the trustee in the deed of trust to the 213 acres — a necessary party — was not legally before the court. As this is a jurisdicitional question, it should, of course, be answered.
The bill in this cause was filed at November Rules, 1927. The Buckeye Savings and Loan Society and John Parks, trustee, were named as parties and the trust deed and the parties thereto were fully described in the bill. The Buckeye Society filed its answer at February Rules, 1928, alleging, among other things, that John Parks had departed this life. No action was taken on that allegation until June 10, 1929, when the Society filed a petition in open court asking that a trustee be substituted in place of Parks. "Whereupon an order was entered on the petition, which recited that “all parties in interest are before the court”, appointed Trevey Nutter *489trustee in place of Parks, and substituted Nutter “to all the rights, powers, duties and responsibilities vested in the said John Parks”, as trustee. “And thereupon”, the order concludes, “the said Trevey Nutter, Trustee, so appointed appeared in open court as a party defendant in this suit and waived the issuing of process against him and service thereof upon him, and the maturing of this cause as to him”. The bill was never amended to include the name of the substituted trustee. The cause had been referred to a commissioner in chancery in May, 1928, wrho had filed his report on March' 4, 1929. But the cause was referred to the commissioner on October 15, 1929, and it was upon his subsequent report filed in September, 1930, that sale of the property was made in 1931. So the substituted trustee was before the court while the real merits of the cause were being adjudicatd.
We are aware that an earlier decision of this court asserted broadly that “one is not a party unless named in the bill” (Cook v. Dorsey, 38 W. Va. 196, 198, 18 S. E. 468, 469), and that technical precision required that the bill be amended to show the substitution of Nutter for Parks. Hogg, Eq. Pro. (Carlin’s Ed.), sec. 98. In Freeman v. Egnor, 72 W. Va. 830, 79 S. E. 824, and like cases cited by petitioners, there was no allegation in the bill relating in any way to the new party, and he sought to introduce a new issue. Here the bill contains an allegation describing fully the trusteeship itself and bringing both the equitable and the legal titles into court. Here the new party introduced no new issue, but simply took another man’s place. And thence forward he acted as a party and was recognized by the court and by the litigants as such, without objection. To hold now that the substituted trustee was not properly before the court, merely because the substitution was not set out in an amendment to the bill (though contained in a decree of the court) would be to sacrifice needlessly substance to form — a ruling we are unwilling to make. In Virginia, the practice was long ago relaxed to the extent that an omitted party can be convened without formal amendment to the bill; and where he then “litigates his rights, he is bound by the decree in the cause determining those rights ’ ’. Epperson v. Epperson, 108 Va. 471, 474, 62 S. E. 344.
*490The petition to rehear further claims that the substitution was not legal because made without the notice (10 days) required by Code 1923, ch. 132, sec. 5. The notice was not requisite since all the parties in interest were before the court, and raised no objection to the substitution being made then.