147 So. 18 | La. | 1933
In order to understand this case, we must go back to three prior cases lately decided by this court, to wit (1) Brim (Bertha, Widow of Calvin Ryan) v. American Surety Co. of New York,
The judgment of this court in the Lyon Lumber Co. Case was rendered June 30, 1930. No rehearing was applied for, but the judgment did not become final until the delays for applying for a rehearing had expired, to wit, until 15 days after rendition, say July 15, 1932.
But the judgment was correct without the need of authorities to support it. Act No. 123 of 1922 was intended to protect one whoadmittedly owes a sum of money claimed by more than one person, and was intended to protect him against the danger of paying it more than once if he should pay the wrong party. This is made evident by section 6 of the act, which distinctly provides that the depositor shall not be liable for any costs in the proceedings save the costs of citing persons who assert no claim to the fund deposited; for it cannot be supposed that such depositor should not pay costs if he were himself asserting any claim to the fund.
But there was no such case as that before us. Plaintiff stoutly resisted from the beginning any claim against it whatsoever. The result was that there was a judgment rendered against it; and, since it had been rendered after all due process, it was, under the "full faith and credit" clause of the United States Constitution (article 4, § 1), just as executory in any other state of the Union as in Louisiana; so that Mrs. Brim might, but for the injunction issued below, have entirely ignored the deposit, taken her judgment to New York, the domicile of plaintiff, and executed it there, without paying the least attention to the deposit made down here. She was not a claimant for that fund; she was a judgment creditor of this plaintiff; and Act No. 123 of 1922 had nothing whatever to do with the case. And any attempt to make her confine her judgment to the fund deposited in court by this plaintiff finds no *872 support either in the letter or in the intent of Act No. 123 of 1922.
That, however, makes no difference. There had been a judgment against the American Surety Company in the court below, though the execution of that judgment had been suspended by an appeal. But the condition on which the law allowed the American Surety Company to suspend that judgment, was that it should pay the judgment if affirmed on appeal and furnish a good and solvent surety who would do so in its stead.
As an appeal is not necessary to due process of law, a state may annex any condition it pleases to the granting of an appeal; and manifestly, if the law requires a surety be furnished to guarantee the payment of the judgment if affirmed, it is not intended as a mere idle formality. Therefore the proceedings in the court below should not and could not prevent the Lyon Lumber Company from proceeding to fix the liability of the surety to enable it to collect from that surety if for any reason the American Surety Company could not be made to pay.
In this case the Lyon Lumber Company, instead of applying for certiorari as Mrs. Brim did, has merely appealed from the *873 judgment perpetuating the injunction. But the point presented in both cases is the same.
Our conclusion is that the trial court erred in issuing the injunction in so far as this appellant is concerned.