Court Opinion

ID: 9523291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:38:20.704054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:04:49.912853
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
Crumpacker, J.
The appellees’ petition for a rehearing of this appeal suggests the possibility that our position in the matter was not stated in our initial opinion as clearly as it might have been. We attempted to say that the appellee Mary Rochwalik’s suit for specific performance, tried to judgment in the Lake Superior Court and her action to quiet title, tried to judgment in the Newton Circuit Court, are the same and identical law suits between the same parties, counting on the same facts and seeking the same relief. Where the primary object of an anti on *216to quiet title to real estate is not to remove a cloud on the owner’s legal title but rather to vindicate an equitable title as against a bare legal title held by another, the remedy is a conveyance of such legal title to the equitable owner thereof. 44 Am. Jur., Quieting Title, §72, p. 58; Blake v. O’Neal (1908), 63 W. Va. 483, 61 S. E. 410. The primary object of the appellee’s suit for specific performance was identically the same— the vindication of her equitable title as against the bare legal title held by the appellants and relief by deed.
“The application of the doctrine of res judicata to identical causes of action does not depend upon the identity or differences in the forms of the two actions. A judgment upon the merits bars a subsequent suit upon the same cause, though brought in a different form of action, and a party therefore cannot, by varying the form of action or adopting a different method of presenting this case, escape the operation of the principle that one and the same cause of action shall not be twice litigated.” 30 Am. Jur. Judgments, Sec. 175, p. 919. Cutler v. Cox (1828), 2 Blackford (Ind.) 178.
The appellees insist however that by reason of the nature of suits in equity we have no right to assume that the judgment against Mary Rochwalik in her suit for specific performance adjudicated the merits of the controversy. That the court may have concluded that the suit was prematurely brought; that there was an adequate legal remedy or that the appellee herself was not doing equity under the circumstances, etc., and therefore denied relief without consideration of the actual facts in issue. There is nothing in the record that remotely suggests that the court’s judgment was prompted by anything but a consideration of the case on its merits and, as was said in Carter v. Schrader (1919), 187 Iowa 1245, 175 N. W. *217329: “In equity, where no more is said, the dismissal of the petition is a dismissal on the merits. In an equity suit, as in every other, there is a presumption that all decisions are on the merits.” Furthermore it is the rule that “a decree refusing specific performance, if intended merely to deny specific performance and to remit parties to their remedy at law (in this case an action to quiet title) without prejudice to such action, should be definite in that respect.” 18 C. J. S., Specific Performance, §168, p. 799.
Finally the appellees complain that we erred in holding that the appellants’ right to possession was adjudicated in their favor by the judgment in the specific performance suit. We think the appellees have misconstrued the effect of our holding in that respect. Right of possession was not an issue in that case and was not adjudicated by the judgment therein. However, the appellants’ complaint in the second action pleads a case for the possession of the real estate involved which the appellees defended solely on the ground that they are in possession thereof by virtue of an oral contract of purchase with the terms of which they have fully complied. Some of the essential facts constituting this defense were, in effect, repudiated by the judgment in the specific performance suit. This did not determine the appellants’ right to possession but, as there was no other defense urged, the situation compels the conclusion that the appellants, being the owners of the legal title to said real estate, are entitled to the possession thereof effective when the appellees’ rights under the third paragraph of their counterclaim have been adjudicated.
Petition for rehearing denied.
Note. — Reported in 130 N. E. 2d 785.
Rehearing denied 131 N. E. 2d 469.