Hanby v. Cahaba Coal Co.
Hanby v. Cahaba Coal Co.
Opinion of the Court
In March, 1912, J. D. Hanby, complainant’s assignor, recovered judgment in the city court of Birmingham against the Cahaba Coal Company, a corporation. The defendant there took an appeal, superseding the judgment by a bond on which J. W. Miller, R. O. Middleton, and G. M. Bowers were sureties. Through error the sureties on this bond were certified in the transcript on appeal as J. W. Miller, B. G. Middleton, and G. M. Brown. In the Court of Appeals a judgment of affirmance, with costs and damages, was rendered against the appellant there and its sureties on appeal as nominated in the transcript of appeal. In the meantime the plaintiff in that cause had executed an instrument in writing, transferring and assigning his judgment to the complainant in this cause, an'd thereafter died. Complainant filed this bill, alleging the insolvency of the Cahaba Coal Company, that the judgment against the sureties was void as to all of them by reason of the error noted above, and praying that a judgment be rendered in her favor against the Cahaba Coal Company and the sureties named in the supersedeas bond. A demurrer taking the ground that there was no equity in the bill was sustained, and complainant’s bill 'dismissed, after which this appeal.
The judgment .was not assigned on the execution docket, nor upon the margin of the record (Code, § 4152), so that complainant became only an equitable assignee (Gardner v. M. & N. R. R. Co., 102 Ala. 635, 15 South. 271, 48 Am. St. Rep. 84; 2 Black Judg., § 947), and, according to the decision in Moorer v. Moorer, 87 Ala. 545, 6 South. 289, any action on the judgment could be maintained in equity only. But this is not an action on the judgment. It is an action on the superse-deas bond. There has been no effort to assign the bond. Complainant is entitled to maintain an action on the bond for the reason only that the assurance of the bond has passed to her as an equitable incident of the judgment. This then is a case of the purely equitable assignment of a legal demand, an'd equity continues to have jurisdiction over the assignee’s suit on the thing in action so assigned. 3 Pom. Eq. Jur. § 1278; 5 Pom. Eq. Jur. § 11.
Suits on supersedeas bonds of this character are rarely necessary;' but that such suit may be maintained'in a case in which the judgment of" affirmance on appeal does not give the relief promised by the bond is demonstrated in Steele v. Tutwiler, 63 Ala. 368. Such, in our judgment, is this case.
For these reasons, we think the court below erred in sustaining the demurrer to complainant’s bill.
Reversed and remanded.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- HANBY v. CAHARA COAL CO. Et Al.
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published