14 Blatchf. 324 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern New York | 1877
This case comes up on a demurrer by the plaintiffs to the answer of the defendants. .The action is upon a judgment rendered by the circuit court of the United States for the district of Louisiana, in favor of the present plaintiffs against the present defendants. The answer sets up a variety of matters which are not defences at common law against the judgment, but which are claimed to give the defendants an equitable right to prevent the enforcement of the judgment. These matters the defendants insist are available to them as a defence in this suit, by force of section 914 of the Revised Statutes of the United States. That section prescribes, that, “the practice, pleadings, and forms and modes of proceeding, in civil causes, other than equity and admiralty causes, in the circuit and district courts, shall conform, as near as may be, to the practice, pleadings, and forms and modes of proceeding existing at the fitne, in like causes, in the courts of record of the state within which such circuit or district courts are held, sfny rule of court to the contrary notwithstanding.”
It must be assumed, that, in a suit upon a judgment, brought in a court of the state of New York, the defence set-up in the answer in this suit would be available by way of answer, if sufficient in substance to entitle the party to relief against the judgment. Such is the known and established law of pro
That these discriminations between legal and equitable rights and suits are substantial, in the jurisprudence of the United States, is further apparent from provisions of the statute law, as well as from the decisions of the courts. Under section 721 of the Revised Statutes, the laws of the several states, with certain exceptions, must be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law, in the courts of the United States, in cases where they apply; while, on the other hand, the law of equity, in the courts of the United States, is one and the same in every state, not dependent upon local law. “Wherever a case in equity may arise and be determined, under the judicial power of the United States, the same principles of equity must be applied to it, and it is for the courts of the United States, and for the supreme court, in the last resort, to decide what those principles are, and to apply such of them to each particular case, as they may find justly applicable thereto.” Neves v. Scott, 13 How. [54 U. S.] 268. Nor are the statutes silent as to the forms and modes of procedure in suits in equity. Section 913 of the Revised Statutes declares, that they shall be according to the principles, rules and usages which belong to courts of equity, except as modified by statute, or rules made in pursuance of statute, or by the supreme court. That court has, accordingly, prescribed a body of rules regulating, very largely and comprehensively, the practice in equity.
It is claimed, that, inasmuch as the present action is one to enforce a judgment, and, therefore, not an equity cause, the procedure is to be conformed to that of the state courts, upon such a cause of action; and that, as those courts allow an equitable right to set aside or restrain the execution of such a judgment, by way of answer, the courts of the United States must conform to that rule. But, this is a mere confusion of names. This so-called defence is an affirmative equitable right to the relief asked. It, under the cases and statutes cited, is to be administered under the equitable principles, and according to the equitable procedure, of the courts of the United States. In that respect, the procedure cannot be conformed to the state practice without overthrowing the whole scheme for the administration of equity in the courts of