Court Opinion

ID: 9643129
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:20:17.132221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:57.718189
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
When the trustee upon the argument consented to the deletion of the clause in the order directing the bankrupt to execute an assignment by way of further assurance, the appeal became moot as to her. In no event could she have any interest in the property; if her assignment to her mother was valid, her mother was the owner; if it was invalid, the trustee was. I agree that she had the right to appeal from the provision which directed her to execute the assignment — idle formality though it was — and that the appellee’s consent did not deprive us of jurisdiction. The question is not what we can, but what we should, do; ordinarily no court decides a question which has ceased to have any real importance for the parties. Indeed, my brothers would not do so here, I apprehend, if they did not also reverse the order so far as it declared that the trustee was entitled to the property as against the widow.
The real question is therefore whether upon the bankrupt’s appeal we may, and should, reverse that part of the order also; i. e., whether that appeal opened it up for all purposes. I cannot see that Rule 74 is relevant to that; so far as it goes beyond abolishing summons and severance — a mere procedural archaism which often defeated appeals actually taken — it appears to presuppose that all those who mean to challenge a judgment shall appeal. That is in line with preexisting law, for the Supreme Court has again and again declared that an appellee may not secure *1014any modification in his favor of a judgment unless he appeals. Cleary v. Ellis Foundry Co. 132 U.S. 612, 10 S.Ct. 223, 33 L.Ed. 473; Fitchie v. Brown, 211 U.S. 321, 329, 29 S.Ct. 106, 53 L.Ed. 202; Marine Transit Corp. v. Dreyfus, 284 U.S. 263, 277, 52 S.Ct. 166, 76 L.Ed. 516; Alexander v. Cosden Pipe Line Co., 290 U.S. 484, 487, 54 S.Ct. 292, 78 L.Ed. 452; Helvering v. Pfeiffer, 302 U.S. 247, 250, 58 S.Ct. 159, 82 L.Ed. 231; Le Tulle v. Scofield, 308 U.S. 415, 421, 60 S.Ct. 313, 84 L.Ed. 355. It is true that exceptions have been made to this; and that the question has been considered in a large number of decisions, all of which it is impossible to reconcile; but I believe that the greater number of these hold that it is not alone a ground for reversal that an appellee, similarly situated, would also have won if the law had been rightly applied in the court below. In Kline v. Moyer, 325 Pa. 357, 191 A. 43, 111 A.L.R. 406; Gebhardt v. Village of La Grange Park, 354 Ill. 234, 188 N.E. 372, that was apparently the case; the defendants were joint tortfeasors and therefore severally liable without contribution, and the reversal in favor of the one who appealed did not prejudice the other who did not. But the contrary was held in Geraud v. Stagg, 10 How.Prac. 369; and so too in Polkowski v. St. Louis Public Service Co., 229 Mo.App. 24, 68 S.W.2d 884, 889, as to the appellee’s liability, though the case was remanded to reassess the damages, lest there should be two different amounts recoverable for the same wrong. The most common occasion for dispensing with the need of an appeal is when the reversal in favor of the appellant puts the appellee in a worse position than he was before. Thus if one joint obligor appeals and succeeds, the other who has not, loses both his right of contribution and the protection that exists in the rule that the release of one joint obligor releases all. This, I take it, is the explanation of Rowell v. Ross, 89 Conn. 201, 93 A. 236, and kindred considerations account for the result in Merchants Discount Corp. v. Federal Street Corp., 300 Mass. 167. In New York certainly, it was the law until In Re Winburn, 270 N.Y. 196 — where the change was placed upon a recent statutory amendment — that it was not enough that the law had been misapplied by the lower court; the rights of the appellee, who would have succeeded had he appealed, had so to enmesh with those of the appellant that the reversal prejudiced him. St. John v. Andrews Institute, 192 N.Y. 382; In Re Union Trust Co., 219 N.Y. 537; In Re Horner, 237 N.Y. 489, 503, 504. In the federal courts I have been able to find only two cases, one of which is clearly in accord with the New York law. Muskogee Nat. Tel. Co. v. Hall, 118 Fed.Rep. 382 (C.C.A. 8). In the other, a surety had sought a general “determination” of its liability, and the Fourth Circuit refused to treat the judgment as limited to the appellants. Maryland Casualty Co. v. South Norwalk, 54 Fed. (2d) 1032, 1039. The “determination” prayed for was apparently treated as a declaration covering the whole class of materialmen generally; and the decision is not in point here.
I believe that we should hold that it is not enough that the law was misunderstood by the lower court, and that it is precisely to raise such questions that the right of appeal is provided. I feel very confident that the bar so understands it and is not misled when we do not disturb judgments in the interest of appellees. Particularly is this appropriate in the case at bar, where the widow has not so much as intimated that she is not content with the order, unless we are to account it such an intimation that the attorney for the bankrupt signs the brief in this court as attorney for her as well as for the bankrupt. It is a sound instinct that confines courts to the decision of disputes and does not seek to redress grievances of which the parties do not complain.
Since for the foregoing reasons I think the appeal should be dismissed, I have not considered the validity of the assignment. Indeed, I should not have done so in any event, because even the bankrupt does not challenge the correctness of the ruling below, but now asserts no more than that the testator’s payment was an ademption of the legacy. I quote from her brief: “Appellant rests her case squarely upon the sole proposition that there has been an ademption of her legacy.” Again: “We therefore take no issue with the propositions of law and the authorities cited in support thereof as set forth in the opinion of the Court below.” Thus, we are insisting upon deciding the case on a- point which the only appellant has expressly abandoned, on behalf of a party who has not appealed at all. I am sorry, but I cannot go along with that result.