Court Opinion

ID: 9865324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:31:53.389567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:28.352435
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.

Upon motion for rehearing we have given the matter of non-joinder of parties most careful consideration and our conclusion is that the motion must be denied.
The only difference of opinion that can exist on that point is on the question whether the rights of the *439omitted brothers can be saved under the provision of Code ch. 1, sec. 16.
The method of saving such rights in English chancery was by permitting the absentees to reopen the decree if when they returned, it was found to be erroneous. Williams v. Whinyates, 2 Brown’s Chan. 399; Smith v. Hibernian Mine Co., 1 Schoales and Lefroy, 238, 240, 241. In the last case cited the Lord Chancellor of Ireland says: “The ordinary practice of courts of equity in England when one party is out of the jurisdiction and other parties within it, is, to charge the fact in the bill, that such a person is out of the jurisdiction, and then the court proceeds against the other parties, notwithstanding he is not before it. It cannot proceed to compel him to do any act, but it can proceed against the other parties, and if the disposition of the property is in the power of the other parties, the court may act upon it.”
So here, the disposition of the property is in the hands of the trustee and the court may act upon it.
Lord Eldon in Cockburn v. Thompson, 16 Ves. Jr., 326, says: “The same principle in a great variety of cases has obliged the court to dispense with the general rule as to‘persons, out of its jurisdiction; and there are many instances of justice administered in this court in the absence of those, whose presence, as parties, if they were within the jurisdiction, it would not be administered ; as it obviously cannot be so completely, as if all persons interested were parties: but the court does what it can.” Bailey v. Morgan, 13 Tex. 342. Mitford & Tyler Pl. & Pr. in Equity, 20, 21, 256, 257; Story Eq. Pl. (10th Ed.), pp. 93-98; Rogers v. Penobscot Min. Co., 154 Fed. 606, 83 C. C. A. 380; Tally v. Ganahl, 151 Cal. 418, 90 Pac. 1049; Searles v. N. W. Mu. Life Ins. Co., 148 la. 65, 126 N. W. 801, 29 L. R. A. (N. S.) 405.
In the last mentioned case the insurance company was sued in Iowa on a life policy by the administrator, and in Connecticut by an assignee of the policy. The court said; “The fact is that the inability to get plain*440tiff and Shepard & Co. (the assignee) into the same jurisdiction, so that a judgment may be rendered as to the validity of the assignment -which will be binding on both of them, is not a misfortune of plaintiff, but of the' defendant. * * * But we are unable to see how defendant can saddle its misfortune upon the plaintiff. * * * ” The court then quotes with approval Hawes on Parties: “The rule that all persons having an interest in the suit should be made parties is not inflexible. It is a rule of convenience, adopted by courts of chancery to shorten litigation * * *, and may be dispensed with when impracticable or very inconvenient; as when such persons are very numerous or are unknown * * * or beyond the jurisdiction of the court. * * * The rule being a rule of convenience courts will not allow it to' be so applied as to defeat the very purpose of justice, if they can dispose of the merits of the case before them without prejudice to the rights of other persons who are not parties, or if the circumstances of the case render the application of the rule impracticable.”
It is true that decisions of this court hold parties perhaps not more necessary than those here in question to be indispensable, but in none of those cases was it held that the case could not go on without them if they were too numerous or absent from the jurisdiction or could not be found, except Rumsey v. N. Y. Life, which we noticed in our former opinion, and Grater v. Logan High School District, 64 Colo. 600, 173 Pac. 714, where it was obviously impossible to save the rights of the absentees, since the only purpose of the suit was to take them away.
It would not be reasonable to say that the court could not proceed without two parties who could not be reached because out of the state, but that it could proceed without say a hundred, whether without or within the state because they were too numerous for convenience, yet all recognize that the latter proposition is right. It would not be reasonable to say that a party is indispensable in the sense that the case cannot go on without Mm in the *441state court, when the same case if in the federal court in the same town would go on without him. That would be to say that the federal court can dispense with the indispensable; yet the federal rule 47 provides for this very thing and the federal courts practice it. So if parties are dispensable when too numerous, it cannot be that one or more of them would be indispensable in the same suit.
However, in the present case we need not go to the extent of these quotations, because the record does not show that the right of the absent cestuis que trustent cannot be saved. Since defendant U. Gr. Cover alleges a settlement, all advances must have been taken care of therein, and so this case is, or at least may prove to be, a mere equal division of property not hitherto accounted for by the trustee, and it will therefore probably be easy to save the rights of the absent beneficiaries. But even if that be not so, their rights can be, or it may appear from the evidence that they can be, saved in other ways, e. g., by a fair division according to the evidence, and a reservation during the period of the statute of limitations of a sum sufficient to protect them against any error or a bond to the same end or a bond to protect the trustee or some other device which will be safe.
We see no reason why the court may not adopt some such plan, and if so it will not be necessary to go, in this case, to the extent of the cases and texts wé have cited.. What we say now, however, is that it does not yet appear, and from the record it does not seem likely, that the rights of the absentees cannot be saved. It is the duty of the court, then, to proceed with the case as far as it can.
We still are of the opinion that when the objection was made by U. Gr. Cover that he was not made a party as trustee, it was the duty of the court to order him made a party by amendment which, since he was already in court in persona, would have been a mere scratch of a pen. It is so held in Iowa on a statute similar to our *442Code, ch. 1, sec. 16. Searles v. N. W. Mu. Life Ins. Co., supra. The rule is also recognized in Pollard v. Lathrop, 12 Colo. 171, 175, 176, 20 Pac. 251, that the court is required to order an indispensable party to be brought in. See Day v. McPhee, 41 Colo. 467, 486, 93 Pac. 670.
The motion for rehearing is denied.
Mr. Chief Justice Bubke and Mr. Justice Adams dissent in part.