State ex rel. Burr v. WhitneyState ex rel. Burr v. Whitney
Uрon an application for a writ of prohibition a rule to show cause wаs issued from this court. It is made to appear that Arthur E. Burr, as trustee in bankruptcy of the estate of the Port Tampa Phospháte Company, a corporation, brоught proceedings in the Circuit Court for Polk County, Florida, against Joseph Hull, the Prairie Pebble Phosphate Company, a corporation, and the Savannah Trust Company, a corporation, to enforce an equitable right in real estatе; that in the course of the procedings an answer was filed to a supplemеntal bill alleging the right to substitute new parties complainants, in which answer it is in effect аverred that certain proceedings were had in the bankruptcy court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts, by which proceedings the substituted complainants were appointed and qualified as trustees in bankruptcy of the Port Tаmpa Phosphate Company, and that such proceedings are invalid for want of jurisdiction and for other stated causes. Exceptions to these features of the answer were sustained. Hull v. Burr,
After this decision the defendant in the equity cause filed a cross bill to the supplemental bill whereby it is against sought to make a collateral attack upon the proceedings of the bankruptcy court of the United States of the District of Massachusetts. A motion was madе to strike the cross bill as being in violation of the decree of this court affirming the order sustaining the exceptions to the answer involving in effect the same matter between the same parties, and the motion to strike the cross bill being denied and the plaintiffs being required to plead thereto, application was made hеre for a writ of prohibition.
Prohibition lies to restrain an excess of jurisdiction as well as to prevent a court from proceeding in a case where it has nо jurisdiction whatever.
Where an application for prohibition is too broad the court may mould the writ and limit it to so much as is proper to be granted. State ex rel. Reynolds v. White,
This court having decided in the cause between the parties that the proceedings of the United States bankruptcy court cannot be collaterally assailed in the State court in defense to bills in equity in the particulars stated in the answer to which exceptions were sustained, such matters cannot now be intei’pоsed by a cross bill in the cause. In so far as the cross bill does seek to relitigatе the matters decided by this court in the cause it is in excess of the authority of the trial court; but in the particulars, if any, wherein the cross bill seeks to cover matters that have not been adjudicated by this court and
As upon a careful considеration of the very lengthy cross bill there may appear allegations of substance not confined to matters ajpady adjudicated by this court in this cause, it is nоt proper to say here that the cross bill as a whole should have been stricken. If the chancellor does not consider matters in the cross bill that have bеen already adjudicated by this court in the cause, his action upon the other matters contained in the cross bill is subject only to an appeal.
With the principles here announced as a guide to the Circuit Judge, considered with the opinion this day filed in Burr v. Hull on appeal, it may not be necessary to issue a writ of prohibition.
The return is an insufficient answer to the rule.