177 Ky. 783 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1917
Opinion op the Court by
— Reversing.
The Buckeye Garment Company is a corporation engaged in selling clothing upon the installment plan to members of clubs organized in different communities. Each club consists of sixty members, and each member pays thirty cents, per week, for sixty weeks, at the end of which time he receives a suit, overcoat, or other garment, according to his order. It is’ provided, however,
A general demurrer was interposed to the petition in , the circuit eourt, and upon hearing was sustained. The
First: That where there is a multiplicity of baseless actions, all involving a common question of law by different plaintiffs, against the same defendant, pending in an inferior court for such amounts as to preclude an appeal to the circuit court, an injunction will lie against the judge of the inferior court and the plaintiffs in the actions therein to stay such multiplicity of actions and the hardships incident thereto.
Second: Unless the Buckeye Garment Company’s method of doing business was unlawful, appellee’s actions in the Franklin quarterly court were baseless and without legal or equitable merit; and,
Third: That appellant’s method of business was not a lottery nor in any way unlawful.
It is also asserted in brief of counsel that unless the business conducted by appellant company comes within the prohibition contained in sections 2573 and 2575, Kentucky Statutes, which denounce all lo.ttery schemes, then plaintiffs’ actions in the quarterly court were baseless and their prosecution should be enjoined by the circuit court. This statement is good so far as it goes, but does not state the whole proposition. In neither state of ease can the plaintiffs in the quarterly court maintain these actions if the allegations of this petition be accepted. If the business conducted by appellant company amounts to a lottery, it is prohibited by sections 2573 and 2575, Kentucky Statutes, and the plaintiffs in the quarterly court actions were pari delicto, and have no standing in court. They would therefore be without remedy. On the' contrary, if the contracts were not void as against the lottery statute, were valid contracts between the garment company and its club members, then the members of the club, suing as plaintiffs in the quarterly court, are not entitled to the relief sought because they will not be permitted to renounce a valid contract into which they have voluntarily entered. Thus it will be seen that it is immaterial in this action whether the money sued for in the quarterly court was obtained on unlawful contracts or valid agreements, the actions below are baseless and cannot be maintained.
The right of the Buckeye Garment Company to enjoin the judge of the quarterly court from proceeding to a trial of the seventy-nine different cases instituted by
, It is a well recognized rule that courts of equity have jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits in certain cases, but it is sometimes difficult to draw the distinction and properly apply the rule. In this action it is alleged that seventy-nine suits have already been instituted against this plaintiff and that fifty more similar actions will be instituted, unless injunction be granted, and that all involve the same questions of fact and law; that the costs of defending these several actions in the quarterly court would be a hardship' and great inconvenience to this plaintiff; that the amounts sued for are less than the jurisdictional amount of the circuit court on appeal, and the judgments obtained in the quarterly court would, therefore, be final and conclusive; that the whole sum sought to be recovered in the several suits in the quarterly court amount to a large sum in the aggregate and if these actions are prosecuted in the quarterly court and judgments obtained there, even upon these baseless claims, plaintiff would be without-remedy.
Generally where the facts are similar and the law applicable to one case must be applied to all, one defendant resisting’ a great number of similar actions may have relief in equity, upon proper application, to prevent a multiplicity of suits, and require the parties' to present their claims in one action, especially where vexatious litigation may be avoided and no unnecessary delay will result to the plaintiff, and, a speedy determination of the several claims may be had. This rule is rested largely upon the necessities of the case; some courts bottom it upon the convenience of the parties. In support of such equitable proceeding it is asserted that the business of the courts are greatly facilitated, affording opportunity to all litigants to have their day in court, and at the same time determining in one action numerous causes which present similar questions of law and fact in the time ordinarily required for one. This rule, however, has no application'where the several plaintiffs have distinct and separate causes of action presenting different states of fact and multitudinous questions of law, because to join and hear such actions together in one suit
“Where, from the nature of a wrong, and from the settled rules of the legal procedure, the same injured party, in order to obtain all the relief to which he is justly entitled, is obliged to bring a number of actions against the same wrongdoer, all growing out of the one wrongful act and involving similar questions of fact and of law; . . . 2nd: Where the dispute is between two individuals, A and B, and B institutes or is about to institute a number of actions either successively or simultaneously against A, all depending upon the same legal questions and similar issues of fact, and A by a single equitable suit seeks to bring them all within the scope and effect of one judicial determination. . . . 3rd: Or where a number of persons have separate and individual claims and rights of action against the same party, A, but all arise from the same common cause, are governed by the same -legal rule, and involve similar facts, and the whole matter might be settled in a single suit brought by all these persons -uniting as co-plaintiffs, or one of the persons suing on behalf of the others, or even by one person suing by himself aloné. . . . 4th: Where the same party, A, has or claims to have some common right against a number of persons, the establishment of which would regularly require a separate action brought by him against each of these persons, or brought by each of them against him, and instead thereof he might procure the whole to be determined in one suit brought by himself against all the adverse claimants as co-defendants,” one action may be prosecuted or defended for the use and benefit of all.
The third rule stated above has application to cases like the one under consideration, but the courts of last resort of the several states have not uniformly applied the rule. Indeed, in some states its correctness is questioned. This court, however, in the case of Illinois Central Railway Company v. Baker, et al., 155 Ky. 512, applied the rule with some slight modifications. In that case forty-one coal miners instituted actions in the quarterly court against the railroad company carrying the product of the mines, claiming damages of the railroad company for its failure to provide sufficient railroad gons in which to load and- transport the coal mined
“We think there is a broad distinction between invoking the jurisdiction of a court of equity to prevent a multiplicity of suits by different plaintiffs, each having a separate, distinct meritorious cause of action, and invoking this jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits by plaintiffs who have not a legally enforceable demand against the defendant. And so, if those coal diggers have not a meritorious demand against the defendant railroad company, there are many reasons why the jurisdiction of a court of equity should be invoked to require all their suits to be heard and determined in one action, that could not be invoked if each of them had a meritorious claim. If no one of the plaintiffs in the quarterly court is entitled to recover any amount against the defendant company in any of these suits, it would be an extraordinary hardship on the defendant to put it to the expense, inconvenience and cost of defending this multitude of suits in the quarterly court, and be an intolerable condition of affairs if, after defending them to the best of its ability, a binding and unreviewable judgment should be rendered against it in each case for the amount claimed and it be compelled to pay the large sum that would be required to satisfy these various judgments, without an opportunity to have its rights determined by a court speaking with more authority than the quarterly court. ’ ’
*789 “Having in mind the distinction that should be observed between the assertion of valid and groundless claims, we think that when a large number of cases arising out of the same transaction or resting on the same common ground, have been instituted by different plaintiffs against the same defendant, and none of the plaintiffs have a legally meritorious or enforceable demand against the defendant, the jurisdiction of a court of equity may be invoked to the end that the rights of the parties, plaintiffs and defendant, may be heard and determined in one proceeding, thereby saving the defendant from the unjust burden of defending a number of separate suits. In this class of eases the exercise of the equitable jurisdiction referred to does not prejudice any substantial rights of the plaintiffs, because they have no substantial rights that can be prejudiced. It does not .deny to them the right to seek lawful redress in any court of justice they may select, having jurisdiction, to hear and determine the case, because they have not suffered any injury entitling them to have redress. It does not take away from them the right to have meritorious relief in a court established for the purpose of giving relief to parties deserving of it, because they have no right to the relief sought.”
In that case the forty-one suits brought by the coal miners were required to be heard in one action in a proceeding similar to the one under consideration. While-it was not there specifically held that plaintiffs holding a number of like claims, such as the ones in the case at bar, could unite and bring their actions in the circuit court, it was held that where a great number of baseless suits were instituted in a lower court by a large number of plaintiffs acting in concert, the amount involved in each case being less than the jurisdiction of the circuit court, the common defendant might bring an action in equity in the circuit court to enjoin proceeding in the inferior court, and to require the several plaintiffs in the lower court to present their claims for adjudication in one proceeding in the circuit court for determination and judgment. That is precisely what is sought here. In this action seventy-nine persons are made defendants because they have instituted separate suits in the Franklin quarterly court against this plaintiff for sums ranging from $2.10 to $11.10, each, all involving the same questions of fact and law. No single _ claim is large enough to give the circuit court jurisdiction upon appeal.
Judgment reversed for proceedings consistent with this opinion.