California National Bank of San Francisco v. Thomas/Opinion of the Court

by Henry Billings Brown

United States Supreme Court

171 U.S. 441

California National Bank of San Francisco  v.  Thomas

Unless the plaintiff in error was denied some right under the constitution or statutes of the United States, "specially set up and claimed" by it, this writ of error must be dismissed.

The bill of complaint filed in the superior court of San Francisco by a stockholder of the California National Bank sought to charge three directors of the bank with negligence in the performance of their trust, and particularly in failing to comply with certain by-laws of the bank, by which large amounts of money were lost to the bank, which the bill prayed that the defendants might be decreed to make good and restore. The bank was chartered under the national banking act, and the by-laws were adopted in pursuance of Revised Statutes (section 5136), which authorizes associations incorporated under the act to define the duties of the president and other officers, and to regulate the manner in which its general business shall be conducted. Certain transactions of the directors are also alleged to be infractions of Revised Statutes (section 5200), for which the directors are made liable in section 5239, although no violations of this section are specifically alleged in the bill.

Demurrers were interposed by the several defendants, and overruled, when answers were filed denying in general the allegations of the bill. The court subsequently entered judgment against the three directors, but, being unable to determine the proper amount, appointed a referee to take proof of the amount appearing to be due and owing to the bank from certain named individuals. Upon such report having been made, a stipulation was entered into between the plaintiff stockholder and the defendants Thompson and Wilson, whereby the plaintiff renounced and withdrew his action against such defendants, and the court, upon stipulation, entered a judgment dismissing the action as against them. The court thereupon made a finding of all the facts in the case, among which was one to the effect that there had been collected of the two defendants Thompson and Wilson the sum of $27,500, leaving a net loss to the bank of $139,419, for which judgment was entered against the defendant Thomas. Thomas thereupon appealed to the supreme court of the state from the judgment so entered.

That court was of opinion that the complaint, though entitled "A Bill in Equity for the Accounting and Settlement of a Trust," contained nothing more that a charge ex delicto against the directors for a breach and nonperformance of their duties. It did not consider it necessary to dispose of the objections to the complaint, but assumed, without deciding, that the complaint was sufficient to state a cause of action in its averments of misconduct. It then proceeded to decide (1) that the complaint was one sounding in tort, and that the defendants were charged as joint tort feasors; that their negligence was pleaded as their joint neglect to perform duties not individually imposed upon them, but collectively undertaken as members of the executive committee; that in the findings of fact no mention was made of any dereliciton of duty on the part of Thompson and Wilson; and that there was an absolute failure by the court to find upon the most material issues of the case,-the joint negligence of the three defendants, which alone, it was alleged, had occasioned loss to the bank. "Such," said the court, "is the cause of action pleaded in the complaint. The findings, if it be conceded that they give evidence of a meritorious cause of action against the defendant Thomas, do so because of a showing that he was negligent, not with the other defendants and as member of the executive committee, but that he was individually and separately negligent in the performance of his duties as president. But this is not the cause of action pleaded against him, and it is well settled that, where the case made out by the findings is a different case from that presented by the pleadings, the judgment will be reversed; for the relief decreed must be the relief sought, and a variance, even if it be such as could have been cured by amendment, is fatal to the validity of the judgment." The court further held (2) that, as the defendants in error were sued jointly for a tort, a withdrawal of the action in favor of Thompson and Wilson operated also to release the defendant Thomas. This was in fact the main reason given for its conclusion. The court thereupon ordered the judgment to be reversed, and the cause remanded, with directions to enter judgment in favor of the defendant Thomas.

In all this record there was no federal right specially set upor claimed by the plaintiff in error until after the judgment in thesupreme court, when a petition for writ of error was filed by theCalifornia National Bank, a co-defendant with Thomas in the original action, in which various allegations were made of a denial of federal rights. But, assuming that a federal question might be extorted from the allegations of the complaint, it is sufficient to say that the case was not disposed of upon the merits of such complaint, which was treated as sufficient, but upon a variance between its allegations and the proofs, and upon the settlement made with the defendants Thompson and Wilson, and the withdrawal of the action against them. These were purely questions under the law of the state, as to which the opinion of the supreme court was conclusive. Not only was no suggestion of a federal question made to the trial court or to the appellate court, but there was nothing to indicate that the judgment rendered could not have been given without deciding a federal question. Indeed, the opinion shows that the cause was decided, as it might well have been, solely upon grounds not involving such question.

Whether a judgment should be ordered in favor of Thomas for a dismissal of the action against him, or simply for a new trial, involved merely a question of the procedure under the law of the state. The court might have been, and probably was, of the opinion that an action would lie upon the separate liability of Thomas, and have reserved for future consideration the question whether the dismissal of this action upon a joint liability would operate as estoppel against a new action upon his individual liability.

There was no federal question involved in the disposition of this case, and the writ of error is therefore dismissed.

Notes