Appellee, herein termed plaintiff, filed a hill in equity in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas against Bankers’ Trust Company, Union' Trust Company, and First State Bank (corporations of Arkansas) as defendants (so designated here), asking that they be restrained from subjecting the plaintiff to a multiplicity of suits and to vexatious litigation by the bringing of separate suits to recover from plaintiff on each of forty-eight alleged forged bills of lading. A motion to dismiss was made by defendants on the grounds that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the cause, that the bill showed on its face a lack of equity, and that plaintiff had a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law. The court overruled the motion and entered judgment for plaintiff granting the prayer for an injunction. Defendants, Bankers’ Trust. Company and Union Trust Company do not appeal. The First State Bank is the only appellant; proper severance having been made. As the ease was determined upon the bill, and
*586
motion to dismiss, the facts properly pleaded in the bill must be taken as established. Merinos Viesea y Compania v. Pan American P. & T. Co. (D. C. N. Y.)
The bill alleges that plaintiff operates a line of railroad through fourteen states, including the state of Arkansas; that defendants are corporations, two of them having places of business in Little Rock, and one in 'Stuttgart, Ark.; that a partnership engaged in business at Stuttgart under the firm name and style of McGill Bros. Rice Mill forged, or caused to be forged, some forty-eight bills of lading purporting to have been issued by plaintiff at Stuttgart and covering supposed shipments of rice by said McGill Bros. Rice Mill; that the Bankers’ Trust Company is the owner of twenty-eight of said bills purporting to cover shipments of the value of $79,-316, and has made demand upon plaintiff for the payment of said amount; that defendant Union Trust Company is the owner of six of said bills purporting to cover shipments of the value of $14,690, and has likewise made demand upon plaintiff for the payment of said amount; that defendant First State Bank is the owner of fourteen of said bills purporting to cover shipments of the value of $31,400, and it also has made demand upon plaintiff for payment of said amount; that said bills of lading were made to resemble genuine bills of lading, and were made apparently negotiable in form in the manner provided by the acts of Congress; that each of said bills purports to represent a separate and definite liability against plaintiff for the value of rice pretended to be covered thereby and. to represent a separate and distinct cause of action against plaintiff, and on which separate suits can be brought in any county in 'the state of Arkansas or in any of the fourteen states through which plaintiff operates a line of railroad; that the demands of each of the defendants could have been made the basis of one suit in the Eastern District of Arkansas, but that said Bankers’ Trust Company, a defendant, has brought two .separate suits against plaintiff, based on two of said forged bills of lading, in the circuit court of Calhoun county, Ark., some one hundred miles from Stuttgart where the alleged bills of lading were forged, and where plaintiff cannot compel the attendance of witnesses who live at Stuttgart and have Icnowledge of the facts relating to the for-gery,. on account of the distance, as under the laws of Arkansas a witness cannot be compelled to attend a trial except in the county of Ms residence or in an adjoining county; that in one of these suits defendant Bankers’ Trust Company, seeks to recover $2.,640 for the value of rice alleged to have been covered by a bill of lading, and in the other $2,-670 for the value of rice likewise covered by another bill. The bill sets forth that it is necessary to the proper conduct of plaintiff’s business as a carrier in interstate commerce that the potential liability of the carriers on these forged bills of lading be held for naught, and that to require litigating the question in separate suits based on each of said forged bill of lading and in separate jurisdictions will constitute an undue and unreasonable burden on interstate commerce. It is alleged therein that, unless defendants are restrained, they or their assigns will subject plaintiff to a multiplicity of suits and to burdensome and vexatious litigation by bringing separate suits on each alleged cause of action in courts far removed from Stuttgart, where it is claimed said causes of action accrued and in courts which have no jurisdiction to compel the attendance of witnesses necessary to plaintiff’s defense, and that plaintiff has no adequate remedy at law. The prayer for relief is this: "Wherefore, inasmuch as plaintiff, has no adequate remedy at law, and, in order to avoid a multiplicity of suits, plaintiff prays that the defendants and each of them be enjoined from negotiating or assigning any of said bills of lading, from prosecuting suits based upon said bills of lading elsewhere than in tMs Court; that they be required to submit said alleged bills of lading to this Court, and that the same be cancelled and held for naught; that, pending a final hearing hereof, a temporary injunction be granted as herein prayed.”
The first- question raised is that, as none of the alleged bills of lading held by appellant exceed the sum of $3,000-, the jurisdiction of the federal court must fail. Some of the purported bills of lading held by defendant Bankers’ Trust Company do exceed $3,-000, but that is of no avail. The amount in controversy between plaintiff and the appealing defendant must exceed $3,000 in order to give jurisdiction, and the requirement as to jurisdiction is the same for eases in equity as for eases at law. Delaware Consol. Oil Co. v. Randall et al. (D. C. Okl.)
The general rule is that jurisdiction is not conferred upon the federal court by joining claims against distinct and separate defendants, no one of which equals the jurisdictional amount. Walter v. Northeastern Railroad Co.,
In Woodmen of the World v. O’Neill,
It may be stated as a conclusion from these eases that jurisdiction may not be conferred by aggregating separate and distinct claims of separate and distinct parties whether in behalf of several plaintiffs joining in a suit against one or more defendants or in behalf of a single plaintiff seeking to enjoin the prosecution against it by several defendants of separate and distinct claims. As the other two defendants are eliminated on this appeal, the question of jurisdiction resolves into one of aggregating the separate and distinct claims of a single party as distinguished from aggregating the separate and distinct claims of separate and distinct parties. We refer to some of the decisions on this question.
This court held in Fitchett et al. v. Blows et al. (C. C. A. 8)
In Edwards v. Bates County, Mo.,
“The claim made by the plaintiff on the coupons was in no just sense accessory to any other demand, but was in itself principal and primary. In ascertaining, therefore, the jurisdictional sum in dispute, the sum of the coupons should have been treated as an independent, principal demand, and not as interest; and in holding otherwise the lower court erred to the prejudice of the plaintiff in error.
“As the face of the bonds amounted to the sum of $2,000, the addition of the demand based upon the coupons brought the sum in dispute within the jurisdiction of the circuit court.”
In Yates v. Whyel Coke Co. (C. C. A. 6)
In Judson v. Macon County,
In Commercial Nat. Bank of Los Angeles v. Catron (C. C. A. 10)
In Central Paper Co. v. Southwick (C. C. 6)
A suit on all of appellant’s fourteen claims could have been brought at law by virtue of the Arkansas joinder statute, Crawford & Moses’ Digest of the Laws of Arkansas, § 1080, or it could have -been brought in equity, assuming grounds for equitable jurisdiction to exist, and the amount in controversy in either ease between defendant-appellant and plaintiff would have been $31,400, the aggregate total of the fourteen claims. Is the amount in controversy any different by reason of the fact that plaintiff began the suit instead of defendanbappellant? We see no reason for any such distinction. Plaintiff is asking for a determination of the validity of these fourteen claims and relief from the expense and vexation of having to defend a multiplicity of suits. The action is to cancel, not one of the bills of lading, but all of them. The necessary result of the litigation, were plaintiff successful, would be to cancel a claimed indebtedness of $31,400. That is the amount in dispute and in controversy between appellant and appellee in this case. We are satisfied the requisite jurisdictional amount exists.
Defendant-appellant argues that the trial court erred in holding equity jurisdiction, claiming that the bill shows on its face that plaintiff is not entitled to the relief prayed for, and that it has an adequate and complete remedy at law. While appellant is the only defendant prosecuting this appeal, the existence of eoparties in the trial court, and the facts alleged concerning them, may be considered as bearing on the question of equity in the complaint. The suit below was a multiparty suit. Therefore the rule announced by some of the courts, New York Life Ins. Co. v. Marshall (C. C. A. 5)
A legal conflict has raged for years over the question of whether equity has jurisdiction on the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits where there exists merely a community of interest in questions of law and fact in the controversy, or whether there must be, in addition to preventing a multiplicity of suits, some recognized ground of equity jurisdiction.
Pomeroy in the first edition of his Treatise on Equity Jurisprudence, at the conclusion of his discussion on bills of peace, says (section 269): “Notwithstanding the positive denials by some American courts, the weight of authority is simply overwhelming-that the jurisdiction may and should be exercised either on behalf of a numerous body *589 of separate claimants against a single party, or on behalf of a single party against such a numerous body, although there is no ‘common title,’ no ‘community or right,’ or of ‘interest in the subject-matter,’ among these individuals, but where there is and because there is merely a community of interest among them in the questions of law and fact involved in the general controversy, or in the kind and form of relief demanded and obtained by or against each individual member of the numerous body.”
Chief Justice Campbell in Tribette v. Illinois Cent. R. Co.,
In Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (4th Ed.), notes to section 264, the opinion in the Tribette Case is designated as “sensational in many of its statements,” and is reviewed at length. The following from Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (4th Ed.) § 251 (a), is necessary to make clear the Pomeroy theory : “Of course there must be some common relation, some common interest, or some common question, or else the decree of a court of equity, and the relief given by it in the one judicial proceeding, could not by any possibility avail to prevent the multiplicity of suits which is the very object of its interference.” The troublesome and rather checkered course of the Tribette Case in the Mississippi courts shows how bothersome the question has been to the courts. In Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Garrison,
In Watson v. Huntington (C. C. A. 2)
A rather late case dealing with this subject is Georgia Power Co. v. Hudson (C. C. A. 4)
In Fish et al. v. Kennamer (C. C. A. 10)
In Warren Bros. Co. v. Kibbe (D. C. Or.)
In Louisville, N. A. & C. Ry. Co. v. Ohio Val. Improvement & C. Co. (C. C. Ky.)
Many courts have hesitated to hold that multiplicity of suits
alone
is ground of equitable jurisdiction, because in that way the right to trial by jury might be destroyed. The answer to that is that to sustain a suit in equity in the federal courts it must appear there is no plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law, and, if the remedy at law is not adequate, the right to a jury trial does not exist. That point is always involved in the question. If prevention of multiplicity of suits confers equitable jurisdiction, no right to a jury trial exists. The avoidance of unnecessary suits should be much desired by litigants and taxpayers! In Munson Inland Lines, Inc., v. Insurance Co. of North America (D. C. N. Y.)
This court recognizes the general principle that the avoidance of a multiplicity of suits is a ground of equitable jurisdiction, and that equity may interfere to prevent them. Investors’ Guaranty Corporation v. Luikart (C. C. A. 8)
In Wyman v. Bowman (C. C. A. 8)
In Barston v. Mingo Drainage District (D. C. Mo.)
This court (Bartson v. Mingo Drainage Dist.,
In Carey v. McMillan (C. C. A. 8)
This holding would seem to imply that avoidance of multiplicity of suits may be sufficient in some cases as the basis of equitable jurisdiction. This court is in line in its later ■decisions with the doctrine of Hale v. Allinson,
“Cases in sufficient number have been cited to show how divergent are the decisions on the question of jurisdiction. It is easy to say it rests upon the prevention of a multiplicity of suits, but to say whether a particular ease comes within the principle is sometimes a much more difficult task. Each ease, if not brought directly within the principle of some preceding- case, must, as we think, be decided upon its own merits and upon a survey of the real and substantial convenience of all parties, the adequacy of the legal remedy, the situations of the different parties, the points to be contested and the ■result which would: follow if jurisdiction should be assumed or denied; these various matters being factors to be taken into consideration upon the question of equitable jurisdiction on this ground, and whether within reasonable and fair grounds the suit is calculated to be in truth one which will practically prevent a multiplicity of litigation, .and will be an actual convenience to all parties, and will not unreasonably overlook or ■obstruct the material interests of any. The single fact that a multiplicity of suits may be prevented by this assumption of jurisdiction is not in all eases enough to sustain it. It might bo that the exercise of equitable jurisdiction on this ground, ’while preventing a formal multiplicity of suits, would nevertheless be attended with more and deeper inconvenience to the defendants than would be compensated for by the convenience of a single plaintiff; and where the ease is not covered by any controlling precedent the inconvenience might constitute good ground for denying’ jurisdiction.
“We are not disposed to deny that jurisdiction on the ground of preventing- a multiplicity of suits may be exercised in many eases in behalf of a single complainant against a number of defendants, although there is no common title nor community of right or interest in the subject-matter among’ such defendants, but where there is a community of interest among them in the questions of law and fact involved in the general controversy.”
There is nothing in the language of St. Louis,
I.
Mt. & So. Ry. Co. v. McKnight,
These forty-eight bills of lading which conceivably might pass into the hands of other parties were forgeries, accepting the statements of the petition as true. The question of fraud is not here involved, for no fraud is charged as against the defendants in the bill. Surely a suit could be brought in equity under these circumstances to cancel void instruments so that in this case there is a well-recognized ground of equity jurisdiction outside of multiplicity of suits. The relief sought against all the defendants was the same, to wit, the cancellation of these bills of lading. The defenses which could be interposed were the same, the legal questions were the same. The operation of the acts of defendants upon plaintiff were identical in their effect upon plaintiff’s rights. If the case had been brought against defendant-appellant alone, the proposition would have been different, because it had brought no suit, and a court might not be willing to presume that, instead of bringing one action covering all the purported bills of lading held by it, it would *592 bring a number of suits, but in regarding tbe equities of the situation the action of its co-defendants is proper to be considered.
The remedy at law must be plain, adequate, complete, and as efficient to the ends of justice as the remedy in equity to preclude the maintenance of the equitable suit. Boise Artesian Water Co. v. Boise City,
In the ease at bar there ean be no possible doubt from the allegations of the bill of complaint but that such remedies at law as raising the defense of forgery in forty-eight separate .suits that may be brought in as many separate jurisdictions (including the separate intrastate jurisdictions in which such suits may be brought), or of consolidating, in accordance with the Arkansas statute, as many of such suits as might happen to be brought in the same court in Arkansas, are entirely inadequate; that each party, with reference to each claim, has an • interest in the same general controversy, “connected with the others,” so that whatever separate issues are raised may be “conveniently tried together”; or that the “balance of convenience” clearly favors the granting of the relief prayed for. A prima facie case of equitable jurisdiction is therefore clearly made out.
The language of this court in Leavenworth Savings & Trust Co. v. Newman,
The District Court was right, and its judgment is affirmed.
Notes
A most Interesting and instructive article on the subject of “Bills of Peace with Multiple Parlies,” by Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr., of Harvard Law School, is to be found in Harvard Law Review for June, 1932.