City of Morgantown v. Royal Insurance Company/Concurrence Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

337 U.S. 254

City of Morgantown  v.  Royal Insurance Company

 Argued: Feb. 9, 10, 1949. --- Decided: June 6, 1949

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, concurring.

On occasion a problem arises which calls for a more discriminating analysis than is conveyed by the phrase 'law and equity are now fused' to indicate the procedural development whereby an action at law and a suit in equity in relation to it may be disposed of in a single litigation. In this case, the deeply rooted historical distinction between an action at law and a suit in equity becomes decisive. Since I would not reverse or impair the ruling in Enelow v. New York Life Ins. Co., 293 U.S. 379, 55 S.Ct. 310, 79 L.Ed. 440, and Ettelson v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 317 U.S. 188, 63 S.Ct. 163, 87 L.Ed. 176, I should like to add a few words to the Court's opinion, in which I join, to make clear why t e present decision leaves those decisions unimpaired.

In the two earlier cases an action at law was brought on an insurance policy. Of course this entitled the plaintiff to a trial by jury. The defendant asked for a cancellation of the policy because of fraud. The district court entered an order suspending the action at law, to be tried by a jury, until the later-begun equitable proceeding-trial without a jury-was concluded. This Court was called upon to construe § 129 of the Judicial Code allowing appeals in limited categories of interlocutory decisions. 28 U.S.C. § 227, 28 U.S.C.A. § 227, now § 1292. With due regard to the actualities of the situation, the Court held that the staying of an action at law by the chancellor is an interlocutory injunction and as such appealable, even though the chancellor who granted such an interlocutory order be the same judge before whom the earlier action at law was pending. The ground of the decision in the Enelow case leaves no doubt as to its scope. Section 129 of the Judicial Code, wrote Mr. Chief Justice Hughes for the Court, '* * * contemplates interlocutory orders or decrees which constitute an exercise of equitable jurisdiction in granting or refusing an injunction, as distinguished from a mere stay of proceedings which a court of law, as well as a court of equity, may grant in a cause pending before it by virtue of its inherent power to control the progress of the cause so as to maintain the orderly processes of justice. The power to stay proceedings in another court appertains distinctively to equity in the enforcement of equitable principles, and the grant or refusal of such a stay by a court of equity of proceedings at law is a grant or refusal of an injunction within the meaning of section 129, as amended. And, in this aspect, it makes no difference that the two cases, the suit in equity for an injunction and the action at law in which proceedings are stayed, are both pending in the same court * * *.' 293 U.S. at pages 381-382, 55 S.Ct. at page 311.

In this case the plaintiff instituted a suit in equity for the reformation of an instrument. The insured, by way of counterclaim, contested that suit and, in addition, sought recovery on the policy. The latter was a conventional action at law which, under the Constitution, entitled the defendant to a jury trial. The judge continued this action at law until the prior equitable proceeding could be concluded. The facts, therefore, are precisely the opposite of those in the Enelow case. Here there was no intervention by a court of equity in proceedings at law, but 'a mere stay of proceedings which a court of law, as well as a court of equity, may grant in a cause pending before it by virtue of its inherent power to control the progress of the cause so as to maintain the orderly processes of justice.' 293 U.S. at pages 381-382, 55 S.Ct. at page 311. Since an interlocutory proceeding in an action at law cannot possibly be brought within the limited class of appealable interlocutory decisions under the old § 129 of the Judicial Code, now 28 U.S.C. § 1292, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1292, there is an end to the matter.

A layman may see no difference between the postponement by a trial judge of an action at law, and the postponement of such an action by an equitable proceeding resulting in an interlocutory injunction. But the Congress has seen fit to allow an appeal from one such result and not from the other. Nonappealability of intermediate orders in the federal courts has been a deep-rooted general principle limiting those courts since their establishment. A very few types of interlocutory orders are appealable. The Enelow and Ettelson cases presented an order that was appealable because it was a stay by a court of equity of a common-law action. This is not such a stay, and in affirming the judgment the Court leaves Enelow and Ettelson untouched.

Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE concurs, dissenting.

Notes