37 F.2d 504 | 10th Cir. | 1930
Rogers County, OHahoma, plaintiff below and appellee here, brought this suit for injunctive relief, prohibitory as to some of the defendants and mandatory as to others. There is no diverse citizenship. Jurisdiction is based on the claimed denial of Federal rights guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution. The ease made by the bill is this:
In 1922 the City of Drumright, in Creek County, OHahoma, issued 171 funding bonds, each of the par value of $1,000.00, for the purpose of - funding its outstanding indebtedness. For that purpose, and in accord with the Oklahoma statutes, the city applied to the district court for Creek County asking for an order of the court that it might fund its indebtedness, and such order was duly entered and the bonds issued. The bonds were approved and registered by the proper city and county officials, a certificate of the Attorney General of the State, who is ex-officio bond commissioner, being attached to each bond, said certificate reciting that he had examined a certified transcript of the record of proceedings relative to the issuance of said bond and that he found the proceedings regular and in full compliance with the constitution and laws of the State of OHahoma, and he approved the bonds as having been regularly and legally issued in accordance with the constitution and laws of the State. He further certified, in accordance with the laws of the State, that the bonds were incontestable in any court of the State after thirty days from the date of his certificate. The bonds
The ease went to final hearing and decree was entered as prayed, enjoining the four
Clearly, the contract clause (art. 1, § 10) is not here involved. No claim is made that the State or city passed a law or enacted an ordinance after these bonds were issued impairing their obligation. Tidal Oil Co. v. Flanagan, 263 U. S. 444, 451, 44 S. Ct. 197, 68 L. Ed. 382.
We recently held in St. L.-S. F. Ry. Co. v. Blake (opinion filed Dec. 9, 1929) 36 F.(2d) 652, which was an action by a taxpayer to recover taxes levied under circumstances like those in the Bristow Battery Co. and Eaton Cases, that the holders of funding bonds were necessary parties, and if not parties the validity of their bonds could not be adjudged, insofar as their rights were concerned. Rogers County was not a party to either the Eaton Case or the Bristow Battery Co. Case. It is in no manner bound by the judgment in either and is as free to ask protection of its rights in the courts of the State now, as it was before those cases were decided. Neither of those judgments has deprived it of its property.
Moreover, conceding, without deciding that the State Supreme Court departed from and changed the prior established rule in that State in all of the respects claimed by appellee in its ruling in the Bristow Battery Co. and Eaton Cases, that fact, if it be a fact, does not present a Federal question. Even if appellee had been a party in the two causes in the State Supreme Court the rulings of the court in those eases would not have deprived it of its property without due process, much less can that claim be sustained under the facts stated. “When the parties have been fully heard in the regular course of judicial proceedings, an erroneous decision of a state court does not deprive the unsuccessful party of his property without due process of law, within the fourteenth amendment of the con-, stitution of the United States.” Central Land Co. v. Laidley, 159 U. S. 103, 112, 16 S. Ct. 80, 83, 40 L. Ed. 91. In Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U. S. 454, 460, 461, 27 S. Ct. 556, 557, 51 L. Ed. 879, 10 Ann. Cas. 689, we find this:
“It is argued that the decisions criticized, and in some degree that in the present ease, were contrary to well-settled previous adjudications of the same court, and this allegation is regarded as giving some sort of constitutional right to the plaintiff in error. * * * Even if it be true, as the plaintiff in error says, that the Supreme Court of Colorado departed from earlier and well-established precedents to meet the exigencies of this ease, whatever might be thought of the justice or wisdom of such a step, the Constitution of the United States is not infringed. It is unnecessary to lay down an absolute rule beyond the possibility of exception. Exceptions have been held to exist. But, in general, the decision of a court upon a question of law, however wrong and however contrary to previous decisions, is not an infraction of the 14th Amendment merely because it is wrong or because earlier decisions are reversed.”
And at page 459 of 205 U. S., 27 S. Ct. 557:
“The requirement in the 14th Amendment of due process of law does not take up the special provisions of the state Constitution and laws into the 14th Amendment for the purposes of the ease, and in that way subject a state decision that they have been complied with to revision by this court.”
In Tracy v. Ginzberg, 205 U. S. 170, 27 S. Ct. 461, 463, 51 L. Ed. 755, the court said:
“The Fourteenth Amendment did not impair the authority of the states, by their judicial tribunals, and according to their settled usages and established modes of procedure, to determine finally, for the parties before them, controverted questions as to the ownership of property, which did not involve any right secured by the Federal Constitution, or by any valid act of Congress, or by any treaty ”
In Bacon v. Texas, 163 U. S. 207, 16 S. Ct. 1023, 1029, 41 L. Ed. 132, section 10 of article 1, U. S. Constitution, was under consideration. After noting that in suits brought on negotiable bonds in a United States court the Supreme Court on appeal therefrom would give effect to decision of the State court rendered prior to the issuance of the bonds rather than to later decisions changing the prior ruling in said State court, then said:
*508 “This court has no jurisdiction to review a judgment of a state court made under precisely the same circumstances, although such state court thereby decided that the state legislation was void which it had prior thereto held to be valid. It has no such jurisdiction, because of the absence of any legislation subsequent to the issuing of the bonds which had been given effect to by the state court. In other words, we have no jurisdiction, because a state court changes its views in regard to the proper construction of its state statute, although the effect of such judgment may be to impair the value of what the state court had before that held to be a valid contract.”
In substance, the bill of complaint asks a Federal court to review the rulings of the State Supreme Court in eases to which complainant was not a party, and to hold that the Supreme Court was in error. Such a contention does not present a Federal question. There was no power in the Federal court below to enter upon the review. It acted without jurisdiction over the controversy. Reversed and remanded with direction to vacate the decree and dismiss the bill.
COTTERAL, Circuit Judge, dissents,