1. Judgment was rendered by the Circuit Court for $1,660.75
against a town on interest coupons detached from bonds which it had
issued under a statute, the unconstitutionality of which it set up
as a defense. The bonds were for a larger sum than $5,000.
Held that this Court has no jurisdiction to reexamine the
judgment.
2. Sections 691 and 692, Rev.Stat., as amended by sect. 3 of the
act of Feb. 16, 1875, c. 77, in limiting the appellate jurisdiction
of this Court in cases of the character therein mentioned, refer to
the sum or value of the matter actually in dispute in the suit
wherein the judgment or decree sought to be reviewed was rendered,
and exclude, in determining such sum or value, any estimate of the
effect of the judgment or decree in a subsequent suit between the
same or other parties.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the Court.
MR. JUSTICE MATTHEWS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This action was brought by Marshall and another, being citizens
of Wisconsin, against the Town of Elgin, Minn., to recover the
amount due upon certain coupons or interest warrants, detached from
municipal bonds, alleged to have been issued by the Town of Elgin
in aid of a railroad company. The defense set up was that the bonds
and coupons were void, the statute, under the assumed authority of
which they had been issued, being, as was alleged,
unconstitutional. The cause was tried by the court without the
intervention of a jury, and it is part of the finding of the court
that at the time of rendering the judgment, the defendants in error
were the owners of the bonds and coupons mentioned in the
complaint, and judgment is given for the amount, $1,660.75, due
thereon, being for the interest on fifteen bonds of $500 each. The
town brought this writ of error.
The case has been fully presented in argument upon its merits as
they appear from the findings of the court, but as we consider
ourselves obliged to dismiss the writ of error for want of
jurisdiction, we have considered no other question.
Page 106 U. S. 579
This question is anticipated by the counsel for the plaintiff in
error, who, while admitting that the amount sued for, and for which
judgment was recovered, is less than $5,000, yet maintains that the
value of the matter in dispute is in excess of that sum because the
defendants in error, being the holders and owners of the bonds to
the amount of $7,500, have obtained by the present judgment an
adjudication, conclusive upon the plaintiff in error as an
estoppel, of its liability to pay the entire amount of the
principal sum.
It is true that the point actually litigated and determined in
this action was the validity of the bonds, and as between these
parties, in any subsequent action upon other coupons or upon the
bonds themselves, this judgment, according to the principles stated
in
Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U. S.
351, might, and as to all questions actually adjudged
would, be conclusive as an estoppel.
And accordingly, the plaintiff in error, in support of the
jurisdiction of this Court, relies on what was said in
Troy v.
Evans, 97 U. S. 1, that
"
prima facie the judgment against a defendant in an
action for money is the measure of our jurisdiction in his behalf.
This
prima facie case continues until the contrary is
shown, and if jurisdiction is invoked because of the collateral
effect a judgment may have in another action, it must appear that
the judgment conclusively settles the rights of the parties in a
matter actually in dispute, the sum or value of which exceeds the
required amount."
The point was not involved in the decision of that case, as the
writ of error was in fact dismissed, and what was said in the
opinion seems to have been rather intended as a concession for the
sake of argument than as a statement of a conclusion of law. The
inference now sought to be drawn from it we are not able to adopt.
In our opinion, secs. 691 and 692, Rev.Stat., which limit the
jurisdiction of this Court on writs of error and appeal to review
final judgments in civil actions and final decrees in cases of
equity and admiralty and maritime jurisdiction to those where the
matter in dispute, exclusive of costs, exceeds the sum or value of
$5,000, have reference to the matter which is directly in dispute
in the particular cause in which the judgment
Page 106 U. S. 580
or decree sought to be reviewed has been rendered, and do not
permit us, for the purpose of determining its sum or value, to
estimate its collateral effect in a subsequent suit between the
same or other parties.
The rule, it is true, is an arbitrary one, as it is based upon a
fixed amount, representing pecuniary value, and for that reason
excludes the jurisdiction of this Court in cases which involve
rights that, because they are priceless, have no measure in money.
Lee v. Lee, 8
Pet. 44;
Pratt v.
Fitzhugh, 1 Black 271;
Barry v.
Mercein, 5 How. 103;
Sparrow v.
Strong, 3 Wall. 97. But as it draws the boundary
line of jurisdiction, it is to be construed with strictness and
rigor. As jurisdiction cannot be conferred by consent of parties,
but must be given by the law, so it ought not to be extended by
doubtful constructions.
Undoubtedly Congress, in establishing a rule for determining the
appellant jurisdiction of this Court, among other reasons of
convenience that dictated the adoption of the money value of the
matter in dispute, had in view that it was precise and definite.
Ordinarily, it would appear in the pleadings and judgment, where
the claim must be stated and determined; but where the recovery of
specific property, real or personal, is sought, affidavits of value
were permitted, from the beginning, as a suitable mode of
ascertaining the fact, and bringing it upon the record.
Williamson v
Kincaid, 4 Dall. 20;
Course v.
Stead, 4 Dall. 22;
United
States v. The Brig Union, 4 Cranch 216. But the
fact of value in excess of the limit must affirmatively appear in
the record, as thus constituted, as it is essential to the
existence and exercise of jurisdiction. This Court will not proceed
in any case unless its right and duty to do so are apparent upon
the face of this record.
The language of the rule limits by its own force the required
valuation to the matter in dispute, in the particular action or
suit in which the jurisdiction is invoked, and it plainly excludes
by a necessary implication any estimate of value as to any matter
not actually the subject of that litigation. It would be clearly a
violation of the rule to add to the value of the matter determined
any estimate in money by
Page 106 U. S. 581
reason of the probative force of the judgment itself in some
subsequent proceeding. That would often depend upon contingencies
and might be mere conjecture and speculation, while the statute
evidently contemplated an actual and present value in money,
determined by a mere inspection of the record. The value of the
judgment as an estoppel depends upon whether it could be used in
evidence in a subsequent action between the same parties, and yet,
before the principal sum, in the present case, or any future
installments of interest, shall have become due, the bonds may have
been transferred to a stranger for or against whom the present
judgment would not be evidence. And in every such case it would
arise as a jurisdictional question not how much is the value of the
matter finally determined between the parties to the suit, but also
whether and in what circumstances, and to what extent, the judgment
will conclude other controversies thereafter to arise between them,
and thus require the trial and adjudication of issuable matter,
both of law and fact, entirely extraneous to the actual litigation,
and altogether in anticipation of further controversies, that may
never arise. It is not the actual value of the judgment sought to
be reviewed which confers jurisdiction, otherwise it might be
required to hear evidence that it could not be collected; but it is
the nominal or apparent sum or value of the subject matter of the
judgment. It is impossible to foresee into what mazes of
speculation and conjecture we may not be led by a departure from
the simplicity of the statutory provision.
Accordingly this Court has uniformly been strict to adhere to
and enforce it.
In
Grant v.
McKee, 1 Pet. 248, it refused to take jurisdiction,
because the value of the premises the title to which was involved
in that action was less than the jurisdictional limit, although
they were part of a larger tract held under one title on which the
recovery in ejectment had been obtained against several tenants
whose rights all depended on the same questions.
Stinson v.
Dousman, 20 How. 461, was an action at law for the
recovery of rent where the claim and judgment against the defendant
below were less than the amount required to give
Page 106 U. S. 582
this Court jurisdiction on a writ of error, but in giving
judgment for the plaintiff below for any sum at all, the Court
necessarily passed upon a defense of the defendant, set up by way
of an answer in the nature of a counterclaim, insisting upon an
equitable right to a conveyance of the land out of which, it was
alleged, the rent issued, and the value of which was in excess of
the limit required for the jurisdiction of the court. The effect of
the judgment was to adjust the legal and equitable claims of the
parties to the subject of the suit, which was not merely the amount
of the rent claimed, but the title of the respective parties to the
land. On that ground alone, the jurisdiction of the Court was
upheld.
Gray v. Blanchard, 97 U. S. 564, and
Tintsman v. National Bank, 100 U. S.
6, are instances of the strict application of the rule
limiting the jurisdiction to the amount actually in dispute in the
suit, of which a similar example is found in
Parker v. Morrill,
ante, p.
106 U. S. 1, decided
at the present term.
Indeed, so strictly has it been applied that in cases where,
although the entire matter in dispute in the suit exceeds in value
the jurisdictional limit, nevertheless if there are several and
separate interests in that sum belonging to distinct parties and
constituting distinct causes of action, although actually united in
one suit and growing out of the same transaction, the jurisdiction
of the Court has been constantly denied. We have had occasion to
repeat and apply this principle in several cases at the present
term.
Ex Parte Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., Schwed v.
Smith, Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. v. Waterman, Adams v.
Crittenden, ante, pp.
106
U. S. 5,
106 U. S. 188,
106 U. S. 265,
106 U. S. 576. In
some of these cases, the value of the matter in dispute, actually
determined against the party invoking our appellate jurisdiction,
actually was largely in excess of its limit, and yet its exercise
was forbidden because it was divided into distinct claims, no one
of which was sufficient of itself to entitle either party to an
appeal, although the decision in one was necessarily the same in
all because rendered upon precisely the same state of facts.
Russell v. Stansell, 105 U. S. 303.
To entertain jurisdiction in the present case would be, in our
opinion, to unsettle the principle of construction by which, in
Page 106 U. S. 583
all the cases referred to, this Court has been guided. The writ
of error is accordingly
Dismissed for want of jurisdiction.