Court Opinion

ID: 9419175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:16.312903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:23.554126
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Reed,
dissenting:
The controlling issue in both the Toucey and the Phoenix Finance cases is the power of a federal court to pro*142tect those who have obtained its decrees against an effort to force relitigation of the same causes of action in the state courts. Questions of res judicata seem inapposite for the conclusion. We are not concerned in either case with the effect of the decrees if and when they might be pleaded in the state actions. Since federal jurisdiction in each case depended upon diversity, their effect as a pleaded bar to recovery in the state suits would depend upon the faith and credit by law or usage given like judgments of courts of the state containing the federal district.1 But when the preliminary question is the meaning and application of the federal decree as a basis for a conclusion as to whether or not the decree shall be enforced by further steps, it is entirely a federal question. It is immaterial from that point of view whether the federal jurisdiction was bottomed originally on diversity, or the Constitution or laws of the United States. The power to give effect to the judgments of federal courts rests with Congress.2 It has exercised that power for general purposes by Judicial Code § 262.3
As originally enacted, § 265 was a single line in a two page act concerning practice in the federal courts, Act of March 2, 1793, c. 22, § 5, 1 Stat. 334. The act’s disconnected provisions were amendments to the statute establishing Judicial Courts of the United States. The short section in which § 265 appeared on the one hand enlarged *143equity powers of judges of this Court by authorizing them to issue writs of ne exeat and injunction, and on the other restricted the use of restraining orders without notice. Left to the four corners of the act, for lack of legislative materials, for deductions as to the purpose and intention of the enacting Congress, and faced with the absolute prohibition of its words, it might well be concluded that the intention was to bar an injunction running against the court itself as distinguished from the parties.4 The fact that courts of equity had long exercised the power to entertain bills to carry their decrees into execution by injunction against the parties adds strength to such a supposition.5 Such needed powers would not be lightly withdrawn.
We are not relegated to such speculations, however. This provision in one form or another has been embodied in our statute law since 1793. It was continued by the adoption of the Revised Statutes of 1878 and the Judicial Code of 1911. It and the cases interpreting it have been woven into the fabric of our law through the decades. What changes would have been made in its form to meet the needs of our expanding jurisprudence, were it not for the flexibility supplied by judicial interpretation, we can only conjecture. Certainly when the Code of 1911 restated its terms, the Congress took into consideration what had by that time come to be its accepted interpretation. Granted that § 265 is not a sentence or section of a legislative scheme whose meaning is to be sought in the purpose of the entire enactment or series of enactments,6 *144we are nevertheless led by the judicial history intervening' since its passage to look beyond the literal language and give weight to those decisions which had added to its content before the reenactment in the Judicial Code. In the Senate Report of the Special Joint Committee on Revision and Codification no change in language was suggested. Yet the Committee, as indicative of the then state of the law, cited numerous cases which are relitigation cases and are analyzed or referred to later in this opinion.7 We are all the more persuaded to believe that the Code of 1911 intended to accept this early legislation with its judicial gloss because of the alternative offered. This alternative is that a federal judgment entered perhaps after years of expense in money and energy and after the production of thousands of pages of evidence comes to nothing that is final. It is to be only the basis for a plea of res judicata which is to be examined by another court, unfamiliar with the record already made, to determine whether the issues were or were not settled by the former adjudication.8 We, too, desire that the difficulties innate in the federal system of government may be smoothed away without a clash of sovereignties, but we find no cause for alarm in affirming a court which forbids parties bound by its decree to fight the battle over on another day and field.9 We should not, in reaching for theoretical symmetry, hamper the efficiency and needlessly break the continuity of our judicial methodology. A decree forbidding a defeated party from setting up any right, anywhere, based upon *145claims adjudged, is the usual form where injunctions are appropriate for determining controversies.10
The courts properly are hesitant to'depart from literalism in interpreting a statute.11 Strong equities do induce departure from the ordinary course where the purpose of the Congress appears plain.12 It is hard to conceive of a statute, new or old, which has a meaning totally disassociated from supporting legislation or the body of adjudications within its ambit. This statute is in a posture much more favorable for the interpretation that it authorizes injunctions against relitigation in state courts than were the statutes construed in any of the cases cited in the preceding note for the interpretation given them. In fact, we conclude that its restatement in the Code of 1911, with the decisions now to be examined in existence, necessitates the interpretation here advocated. Additional decisions since 1911 and the failure of Congress to repudiate this interpretation add something of substance to this argument.
There exists no divergence of view in regard to the power of federal courts to enjoin proceedings in state courts where the state action may embarrass or interfere with the federal court’s prior control over a res which is in its possession.13 That is an exception to § 265. Equally firmly embedded is the power, long exercised as compatible with § 265, of carrying into execution by injunction against state actions the equitable decrees which have settled rights or claims between the parties to the federal litigation. This might be said to be auxiliary to the protective jurisdiction over property in the possession *146of a court. Inasmuch, however, as the cases hereafter cited concern rights arising from claims already adjudicated, and since, in the cases where a res was at one time involved, the property was no longer in the possession of the court issuing the injunction, the theory of preventing an unseemly clash over physical possession has no basis. The principle for which the following authorities stand is that a court haa the right to execute its decrees to avoid relitigation and forced reliance on res judicata. The proceedings, as will be made to appear later, which were supplemented by the orders prohibiting state suits here under review, fall well within the limits of this hitherto well recognized conception.
As early as 1893 this Court declared, in Root v. Woolworth, 150 U. S. 401, 411, that the “jurisdiction of courts of equity to interfere and effectuate their own decrees by injunctions or writs of assistance in order to avoid the relitigation of questions once settled between the same parties, is well settled.” Root, the party enjoined by the original decree, asserted rights which would require reliti-gation of settled issues. Accordingly he was enjoined on supplemental bill, inter alia, “from bringing any action or actions touching the title to or possession of the said premises . . Until dissolved, that injunction forbade proceedings in state and federal courts alike. Although § 265 was not discussed, the case is cited as a convenient summary of the then law, and because it promptly became a precedent for enforcement of decrees even when the problem of § 265 was raised. The authority of this case has not been doubted until now.
Prout v. Starr, 188 U. S. 537, 544, forbade a state suit in violation of a federal court stipulation for a decree, treated the stipulation as a decree, and enjoined an action in per-sonam in the state court for the collection of penalties under an unconstitutional statute. The state action was in violation of the original federal decree. This Court-said: “The jurisdiction of the Circuit Court could not be *147defeated or impaired by the institution, by one of the parties, of subsequent proceedings, whether civil or criminal, involving the same legal questions, in the state court.”
In 193 U. S. appeared the case of Julian v. Central Trust Company. A railroad property in North Carolina had been sold under foreclosure proceedings in the federal circuit court. The decree was that the property be sold free of all claims of parties and the judicial sale was confirmed to the Southern Railway Company. Some years later a cause of action arose which was prosecuted to judgment in a state court against the original mortgagor without notice to or claim against the purchaser, the Southern. In the face of a threat to sell the property formerly conveyed by the federal decree, the circuit court enjoined the state proceedings. This Court said, pp. 112, 114: “In such case we are of opinion that a supplemental bill may be filed in the original suit with a view to protecting the prior jurisdiction of the Federal court and to render effectual its decree. ... In such cases where the Federal court acts in aid of its own jurisdiction and to render its decree effectual, it may, notwithstanding sec. 720, Rev. Stat., [§ 265 J. C.] restrain all proceedings in a state court which would have the effect of defeating or impairing its jurisdiction. ... It is conceded that the Federal right could be set up in the state court from which the execution issued, and, if denied, the ultimate rights of the parties can be determined upon writ of error to this court. In the view we have taken of this case the Federal court had not lost its jurisdiction to protect the purchaser at its sale upon direct proceedings such as are now before us.”14
*148Riverdale Mills v. Manufacturing Co., 198 U. S. 189, followed the established doctrine. The Riverdale Mills acquired property by judicial sale in the federal court. A state proceeding later was begun by parties to the federal foreclosure alleging the invalidity of the sale and seeking possession of the property. Riverdale then filed an ancillary bill in the original foreclosure suit for an injunction against prosecution of the state suit. Against the claimed protection of R. S. § 720 (§ 265 J. C.), p. 193, it was held here that a federal court may “protect the title which it has decreed as against every one a party to the original suit and prevent that party from relitigating the questions of right which have already been determined.” P. 195.
It is quite clear that the Court in both the Julian and the Riverdale cases was intent not on protecting a res, since that had long passed from its hands, but on avoiding relitigation by executing its decrees. This appears particularly from their reliance upon French v. Hay, 22 Wall. 250; Dietzsch v. Huidekoper, 103 U. S. 494; and Sharon v. Terry, 36 F. 337. In the French case no res was involved. It was a federal injunction against the enforcement of a judgment of a state court obtained in a state action after removal of a related but separate state suit. The reasoning proceeded upon the protection of federal judgments, not on the language of the removal statute. The same is true of Dietzsch. There a state suit on a replevin bond was enjoined by the federal court because it grew out of a failure to return property awarded in replevin in a state court after the removal of the original replevin suit to the federal court which issued the injunction. It was there said, p. 497: “A court of the United States is not prevented from enforcing its own judgments by the statute which forbids it to grant a writ of injunction to stay proceedings in a State court.”
*149The Court today lays aside Gunter v. Atlantic Coast Line, 200 U. S. 273 (1906), as inapplicable. The case in our view may be properly cited as a relitigation decision. It forcefully declares, albeit by alternative ruling, for the position here taken. A federal court had enjoined a state tax on the ground of unconstitutionality. The state was a party. Years later the state brought an action in the state court for the tax which the decree prohibited. An ancillary bill sought and obtained an injunction from the federal court. This Court said, p. 292, “Indeed, the proposition that the Eleventh Amendment, or section 720 of the Revised Statutes, control a court of the United States in administering relief, although the court was acting in a matter ancillary to a decree rendered in a cause over which it had jurisdiction, is not open for discussion. Dietzsch v. Huidekoper, 103 U. S. 494; Prout v. Starr, 188 U. S. 537; Julian v. Central Trust Co., 193 U. S. 93, 112.” It cannot fairly be said, we think, that this was not a holding that a federal court has the duty to protect its parties against relitigation. This seems quite certain when we examine the cases cited which are discussed heretofore in this opinion.
The Terry case, cited under the Riverdale Mills case, supra, is a good illustration of the permeation of our law by the principle of protection of federal decrees by injunctions against prosecuting state suits which relitigate settled issues. In Sharon v. Terry, a former decree had determined the fraudulent character of a marriage contract, and had enjoined all efforts to establish rights under any of its provisions. Notwithstanding this decree, a party thereafter sought and obtained a judgment of the highest court of the state determining the marriage contract valid. There was no plea of res judicata in the state proceedings. After the entry of the state judgment', the personal representative of the winning party in the federal suit revived that proceeding and obtained a *150renewal of the injunction over the specific objection that R. S. § 720 (§ 265 J. C.) barred the order. 36 F. 337, 365.
The opinion was by Justice Field of this Court, on circuit, and stated: “The decree of the federal court, when revived, may be used to stay any attempted enforcement of the judgment of the state court.” P. 364. It is true that the opinion shows that the circuit court was of the view that prior jurisdiction of an in personam cause gave the federal court authority to issue an injunction against state proceedings. P. 366. But the decision was directly on the point of enforcement of a decree. When the case came to this Court it was affirmed without consideration of § 265 on the ground that the propriety of the revivor was the only matter for decision, 131 U. S. 40.
In the later case of Missouri Pacific Ry. Co. v. Jones, 170 F. 124 (1909), a federal court had decided that a state statute fixing railroad rates was unconstitutional, and had entered decrees for the railroads accordingly. Thereafter, a county attorney commenced a suit in the state court against the companies to restrain collection of any but the statutory rate. On supplemental bill by the railroads the federal court enjoined him from prosecuting that suit, and relitigating the rate controversy. Similarly, in St. Louis Mining & Milling Co. v. Montana Mining Co., 148 F. 450 (1906), the unsuccessful party in the federal suit was enjoined from proceeding further in the state court to relitigate matters already decided.15 The fact that the federal proceeding was ancillary to an action to try title seems to have had no part in the decision.16
*151These cases were all handed down before the adoption of the Judicial Code in 1911. They are catalogued to show that the power of the federal courts to make their decrees effective was accepted as consonant with the general prohibition of § 265. Pomeroy taught that this was the law in 1905.17 The rule was applied after 1911 when occasion arose. By Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur v. Cauble, 255 U. S. 356, 367, it was decided in 1921 almost without discussion that a federal court which had entered a decree as to rights in a fraternal benefit association in a class suit might enjoin by ancillary bill other members of the class from relitigating the issues in a state suit. Looney v. Eastern Texas R. Co., 247 U. S. 214, cited as a controlling precedent, was suggested there by appellant, the Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur, upon the very point here under discussion. Id., 65 Law. Ed. 675. This Court now lays the Looney case aside as not being a “relitigation” case. While the injunction in the Looney case was not in aid* of a decree, it was in aid of jurisdiction taken to determine a Texas rate controversy. A temporary in j unction had been entered to maintain the status quo until a review by the Interstate Commerce Commission. A temporary injunction may well be likened to a decree and entitled to the same protection against relitigation. Such was evidently this Court’s view. It said, page 221: “So important is it that unseemly conflict of authority between state and federal courts should be avoided by maintaining the jurisdiction of each free from the encroachments of the other, that § 265 of the Judicial Code, Rev. Stats., § 720, Act of March 2, 1793, *152c. 22, 1 Stat. 334, has repeatedly been held not applicable to such an injunction.”
The last case in this Court, Local Loan Co. v. Hunt, 292 U. S. 234, upheld by a unanimous court an injunction, upon an ancillary bill in a bankruptcy proceeding, forbidding the prosecution in a state court of a claim discharged in bankruptcy. This Court placed its decision squarely on the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court to execute its decrees “notwithstanding the provisions of § 265 of the Judicial Code.” Quite properly no mention is made of the exception in § 265 “except in cases where such injunction may be authorized by any law relating to proceedings in bankruptcy.” The only authorization for injunctions is in Bankruptcy Act § 11,11 U. S. C. § 29, which provides for a stay of pending suits during adjudication in bankruptcy. This is substantially the language of § 21 of the Bankruptcy Act of 1867,14 Stat. 526, which caused the insertion of the exception in the Revised Statutes, as is shown by the cross-reference under R. S. § 720. The specific exception of § 265 was inapplicable to the Local Loan Company situation. Furthermore, this case involved a res only in the sense that every bankruptcy proceeding involves a res, i. e., the estate.
Other federal courts, since the adoption of the Judicial Code, have continued to enjoin relitigation of settled issues.18
We think it may be accurately stated that for more than half a century there has been a widely accepted rule sup*153porting the power of federal courts to prevent relitigation. There are adequate precedents directly in point and others which recognize that the rule exists and is sound. Some at one time involved a res. A number applied the same rule when a res was never in the hands of the court. Not a case nor a text book is cited to support the Court’s present position. No articles in periodicals suggest the propriety or desirability of so positive a change, except a single query as to the logic of the relitigation development.19 Though the Judicial Code received careful analysis before adoption,20 no language was inserted to disavow the settled con-, struction of the reenacted section. Dial v. Reynolds, 96 U. S. 340, said by the Court to be a “relitigation” case, did not involve a decree. In a federal suit to quiet title an injunction was sought to forbid a state action in ejectment. It is in line with Kline v. Burke Construction Co., 260 U. S. 226, but not even persuasive on the question of re-litigation or execution of decrees.
We turn now briefly to the original and auxiliary decrees in the two cases under consideration. In the Toucey case, his suit in equity against the insurance company for restoration of an insurance policy and payments for benefits under it on the ground of the fraud of the company was decided against Toucey. An assignee of Toucey’s in privity with him sought to relitigate the same issues in a state court. The federal court which entered the original decree enjoined on supplemental bill “retrial, reconsideration or readjudication” of the settled issues and the prosecution of the state action.21
*154In the Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Co. case, a decree, invalidating a certain mortgage and bonds issued in consideration of claimed indebtedness after protracted litigation, was entered December 1, 1936, in a mortgage foreclosure suit brought in a federal court by the bondholders. This decree became final.22 Thereafter parties to the proceedings sought to litigate, in the state courts of Delaware, the validity of certain items of the indebtedness which are alleged to form the basis for the bond issue and to have been invalidated by the former federal decree. A supplemental and ancillary bill was filed by the Bridge Company in the original federal court suit seeking an injunction against the relitigation of the already adjudicated causes of action. The District Court granted the injunction on a finding that the causes declared upon in Delaware had been settled by the federal litigation.23
These summary statements show plainly, it seems to us, that the injunctions now set aside by this Court were issued within the recognized rule that federal courts may protect their decrees by prohibiting relitigation, without violation of § 265 as heretofore understood and interpreted. Both decrees should be affirmed.24
The Chief Justice and Me. Justice Robeets concur in this dissent.

 R. S. § 905; 28 U. S. C. § 687; Hancock National Bank v. Farnum, 176 U. S. 640.

 Embry v. Palmer, 107 U. S. 3, 9; Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Sowers, 213 U. S. 55, 64.

 “The Supreme Court and the district courts shall have power to issue writs of scire facias. The Supreme Court, the circuit courts of appeals, and the district courts shall have power to issue all writs not specifically provided for by statute, which may be necessary for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions, and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” (R. S. § 716; Act of Mar. 3, 1911, c. 231, § 262, 36 Stat. 1162.)

 Cf. Steelman v. All Continent Corp., 301 U. S. 278, 290; Warren, Federal and State Court Interference, (1930) 43 Harv. L. Rev. 345, 372.

 Story, Equity Pleadings (10th Ed.) § 429; Mitford, Pleadings in Chancery (1780) p. 38; Cooper, Equity Pleading, (1809) pp. 98, 99; Booth v. Leycester, 1 Keen 579 (1837); Kershaw v. Thompson, 4 Johns. Ch. 609 (N. Y. 1820).

 Cf. United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S. 534, 543.

 French v. Hay, 22 Wall. 250; Dietzsch v. Huidekoper, 103 U. S. 494; Julian v. Central Trust Co., 193 U. S. 112; Sharon v. Terry, 36 F. 337; Garner v. Second National Bank, 67 F. 833; Central Trust Co. v. Western N. C. R. Co., 89 F. 24; James v. Central Trust Co., 98 F. 489; Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. St. Joseph Union Depot Co., 92 F. 22; State Trust Co. v. Kansas City, P. & G. R. Co., 110 F. 10.

 Dietzsch v. Huidekoper, 103 U. S. 494, 498.

 Cf. Princess Lida v. Thompson, 305 U. S. 456, 466.

 E. g., In re Chiles, 22 Wall. 157, 166; Sharon v. Terry, 36 F. 337, 345.

 Cf. Southern Railway Co. v. Painter, post, p. 155.

 United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S. 534; United States v. Guaranty Trust Co., 280 U. S. 478; Miller v. Nut Margarine Co., 284 U. S. 498; Allen v. Regents, 304 U. S. 439.

 Kline v. Burke Construction Co., 260 U. S. 226, 229.

 The doctrine of the Julian case finds illustrations in the lower federal courts. While it is true that those courts were enforcing foreclosure, that purpose had been accomplished and the enjoined state suits sought relitigation of closed issues. James v. Central Trust Co., 98 F. 489 (1899), modifying Central Trust Co. v. Western N. C. R. Co., 89 F. 24 (1898); State Trust Co. v. Kansas City, P. & G. R. Co., 110 F. 10 (1901); Central Trust Co. v. Western North Carolina R. Co., 112 F. 471 (1901); Alton Water Co. v. Brown, 166 F. 840 (1908).

 Cf. Garner v. Second National Bank, 67 F. 833 (1895).

 There are instances of the recognition of the power to prevent relitigation despite R. S. § 720 though the power was not actually exercised. Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. v. St. Joseph Union Depot Co., 92 F. 22, 25 (1898); Guardian Trust Co. v. Kansas City Southern *151Ry. Co., 146 F. 337, 340 (1906). Craft v. Lathrop, Fed. Cas. No. 3318 (1851), presents the converse situation of the exercise of this power without consideration of the contemporary equivalent of § 265.

 II Pomeroy's Equitable Remedies (1905) § 640, p. 1079. After discussing § 265 — “Accordingly, a federal court may grant an injunction against a proceeding in a state court when necessary to render effective its own decree."

 St. Louis-San Francisco Ry. v. McElvain, 253 F. 123 (1918) (validity of mortgage foreclosure); Wilson v. Alexander, 276 F. 875 (1921) (defeasibility of title to land); Hickey v. Johnson, 9 F. 2d 498 (1925) (validity of deeds to Indian land); American Surety Co. v. Baldwin, 2 F. Supp. 679 (1933) (liability of surety on appeal bond); Sterling v. Gredig, 5 F. Supp. 329 (1932) (validity of provisions in a will); Hesselberg v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 102 F. 2d 23 (1939) (validity of insurance policy).

 See Taylor and Willis, The Power of Federal Courts to Enjoin Proceedings in State Courts, (1933) 42 Yale L. J. 1169,1176. Cf. Warren, Federal and State Court Interference, (1930) 43 Harv. L. Rev. 345, 378.

 Senate Report No. 388, 61st Cong., 2d Sess., (1910), p. 2.

 Cf. Toucey v. New York Life Ins. Co., 102 F. 2d 16, 20; Equitable Life Assur. Soc. v. Wert, 102 F. 2d 10.

 98 F. 2d 416, cert. denied, 305 U. S. 650.

 See, for an understanding of the complexities of the issues already settled: Bechtel Trust Co. v. Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Co., 19 F. Supp. 127; First Trust & Savings Bank v. Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Co., 98 F. 2d 416; Phoenix Finance Corp. v. Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Co., 115 F. 2d 1.

 It might be noted that § 265 is recognized as merely a limitation on general equity powers, Smith v. Apple, 264 U. S. 274, while the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, is a denial of jurisdiction to enjoin. “No court of the United States . . . shall have jurisdiction to issue any . . . injunction in a case involving or growing out of a labor dispute, except . . .”