Court Opinion

ID: 9623341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:31:29.170756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:20.864422
License: Public Domain

TOWLES, Justice Pro Tem.,
dissenting:
From the majority’s determination affirming the trial court’s action in dismissing the above case on the ground that another action was pending, I must dissent.
As pointed out by the majority opinion, an action was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, was dismissed by the court on motion for summary judgment, and an appeal was filed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
About the same time the appeal was filed, the plaintiff appellants herein filed an action in the state district court involving the same set of facts and the same parties. The trial court dismissed the state action on the grounds that (1) another action was pending (I.R.C.P. 12(b)(8)), and (2) that the decision dismissing the action in the federal court was res judicata.
As events subsequently developed, the Ninth Circuit Court reversed the federal district court and remanded the case for further proceedings. The majority opinion takes judicial notice of the action of the Ninth Circuit Court and, hence, at the present time there is no final decision of the federal court that could be pled as res judicata.
With the exception of the Federal Employers Liability Act cases and bankruptcy cases, the courts have uniformly held that the pendency of a personal or transitory action in either the state or federal court is not ground for abating a subsequent action in the other court. This is true even though the state and federal courts have the same territorial jurisdiction. 1 C.J.S. Abatement & Revival §§ 63, 67, and cited cases.
The majority reasons that the “maintenance of simultaneous actions in the state and federal courts involving the same parties and the same issues incurs needless and substantially increased costs to the defendant, is a waste of judicial resources, and conjures up the possibility of conflicting judgments by state and federal courts.”
Here the action in the.federal court was strictly one in personam. The state court action, on the other hand, in its prayer for relief requested a decree quieting title to standing timber located in Idaho County and, as such, was an action in rem. As observed by Justice Sutherland in Kline v. Burke Constr. Co., 260 U.S. 226, 229-31, 43 S.Ct. 79, 81, 67 L.Ed. 226, 229-30 (1922):
*526“ ‘The forbearance which courts of coordinate jurisdiction, administered under a single system, exercise towards each other, whereby conflicts are avoided, by avoiding interference with the process of each other, is a principle of comity, with perhaps no higher sanction than the utility which comes from concord; but between state courts and those of the United States, it is something more. It is a principle of right and of law, and therefor of necessity. It leaves nothing to discretion or mere convenience. These courts do not belong to the same system, so far as their jurisdiction is concurrent; and although they coexist in the same space, they are independent, and have no common superior. They exercise jurisdiction, it is true, within the same territory, but not in the same plane; and when one takes into its jurisdiction a specific thing, that res is as much withdrawn from the judicial power of the other as if it had been carried physically into a different territorial sovereignty. To attempt to seize it by a foreign process is futile and void. The regulation of process, and the decision of questions relating to it, are part of the jurisdiction of the court from which it issues.’
“But a controversy is not a thing, and a controversy over a mere question of personal liability does not involve the possession or control of a thing, and an action brought to enforce such a liability does not tend to impair or defeat the jurisdiction of the court in which a prior action for the same cause is pending. Each court is free to proceed in its own way and in its own time, without reference to the proceedings in the other court. Whenever a judgment is rendered in one of the courts and pleaded in the other, the effect of that judgment is to be determined by the application of the principles of res judicata by the court in which the action is still pending in the orderly exercise of its jurisdiction, as it would determine any other question of fact or law arising in the progress of the case. The rule, therefore, has become generally established that where the action first brought is in personam and seeks only a personal judgment, another action for the same cause in another jurisdiction is not precluded. Stanton v. Embrey, 93 U.S. 548, 23 L.Ed. 983; Gordon v. Gilfoil, 99 U.S. 168, 178, 25 L.Ed. 383; Hunt v. New York Cotton Exchange, 205 U.S. 322, 339, 27 S.Ct. 529, 51 L.Ed. 821; Insurance Co. v. Brune’s Assignee, 96 U.S. 588, 592, 24 L.Ed. 737; Merritt v. American Steel Barge Co., 79 F. 228, 24 C.C.A. 530; Ball v. Tompkins (C.C.), 41 F. 486; Holmes County v. Burton Construction Co., (C.C. A.), 272 F. 565, 567; Standley v. Roberts, 59 F. 836, 844, 845, 8 C.C.A. 305; Green v. Underwood, 86 F. 427, 429, 30 C.C.A. 162; Ogden City v. Weaver, 108 F. 564, 568, 47 C.C.A. 485; Zimmerman v. So Relle, 80 F. 417, 419, 420, 25 C.C.A. 518; Baltimore & Ohio R. Co. v. Wabash Railroad Co., 119 F. 678, 680, 57 C.C.A. 322; Guardian Trust Co. v. Kansas City Southern Railway Co., 146 F. 337, 340, 76 C.C.A. 615; Guardian Trust Co. v. Kansas City Southern Railway Co., 171 F. 43, 96 C.C.A. 285, 28 L.R.A.(N.S.) 620; Woren v. Witherbee, Sherman & Co. (D.C.), 240 F. 1013; W. E. Stewart Land Co. v. Arthur (C.C.A.), 267 F. 184.”
The case of Barnett v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 119 Ohio App. 329, 200 N.E.2d 473 (1963), involved a Federal Employers Liability Act suit in both state and federal court. The court quotes extensively from the Kline case as well as Barber Asphalt Pav. Co. v. Morris, 132 F. 945 (8th Cir. 1904), and in quoting from Barber Asphalt the following appears:
“On pages 44 and 45 of 1 American Jurisprudence it is stated:
‘The converse of this rule is equally true as a general proposition: the pend-ency of a prior suit in the federal court is not generally a bar to a suit in the state court by the same plaintiff against the same defendant and for the same cause of action, unless the action in the federal court is one that has been removed from the state court. Each court is free to proceed in its own way and in its own *527time, without reference to the proceedings in the other court. Generally speaking, the federal courts and the state courts which have concurrent jurisdiction over civil actions may be considered as courts of separate jurisdictional sovereignties.
‘The General rule stated that the pend-ency of actions in the federal court and the state court at the same time does not entitle the defendant to an abatement of one of the actions applies whether the two courts are sitting in different states, or in the same state.’
“See, also, 21 C.J.S. Courts § 529, p. 808.” 200 N.E.2d at 475-76.
In Barnett the court then distinguishes F.E.L.A. cases from the general rule and approves the state trial court’s action in dismissing its case in favor of the previously filed federal action.
It would avail nothing to unnecessarily extend the length of this dissent by quoting from other cases in which similar rulings have been made. I have been unable to find any cases that hold to the contrary or support the position taken by the majority in this case, where an in personam action was pending in the federal court and another action was pending between the same parties and based upon the same facts in a state court.
The majority relies on Farmer v. Boyd, 89 Idaho 269, 404 P.2d 353 (1965), and Stevens v. Home Savings & Loan Assoc., 5 Idaho 741, 51 P. 779 (1898), as authority for its decision in this case. In both Farmer and Stevens, the conflicting cases were both filed in the state court and in fact were filed in the same county. This is not authority for the action of the majority in the case at bar.
Here the federal court may, for a number of reasons, not be inclined to pursue the action, may ultimately determine that it did not have jurisdiction, or for other reasons not reaching the merits of the controversy may dismiss the action. Without another action pending in the state court it is highly conceivable that a litigant could lose his day in court through the operation of the statute of limitations.
On the other hand, the federal court could complete processing of the action, make its determination on the facts before it, resulting in a “final judgment.” At that point the state court, having previously stayed its proceedings, could then properly consider the question of res judicata. This is a much better rule of law than the offhand dismissal of the state court action due to the pendency of the federal court action, as it preserves the right of litigants without undue additional expense or waste of judicial manpower.
For these reasons I would reverse the dismissal of the action by the district court, reinstate the proceeding with directions to the court to enter an order staying the state court proceedings pending the final determination of the federal court action. In this way the parties would be assured that they would have their day in one court or the other.