Yates Et Ux. v. Gulf Oil Corporation , 182 F.2d 286 ( 1950 )

HOLMES, Circuit Judge

(dissenting in part).

Upon a close question of Texas land law, by its declaratory judgment, this court’s decision forestalls a suit for damages in a forum of appellants’ choice, and cuts off a trial by jury in an action of trespass to try title. This is more than the plaintiff even asked for in the instant case when it obtained a temporary restraining order that stayed appellants’ interference until the Gulf’s seismographic operations were finished, the complaint alleging that the plaintiff was financially able to respond in any damages that might accrue to the defendants, and giving a bond to secure the payment thereof as required by the court.

When this suit was originally instituted, the only special relief prayed for was an injunction to restrain the appellants from interfering with the appellee’s going upon the property of the appellants for the purpose of operating a seismograph under a lease that gave the appellee the right to go on the land for the sole and only purpose of mining for oil, gas, and other minerals. The work proceeded so rapidly, under protection of the restraining order, that no hearing was ever had upon the application for a temporary or final injunction. The court below held the matter of injunctive relief to be moot, but permitted the appellee to amend its complaint and pray for a declaratory judgment.

The question of the rightful or wrongful issuance of the restraining order was not moot, and no declaratory judgment should have been granted that cut off the present or future right of the appellants to sue appellee for damages for injuries to their property caused by operations of the seismograph. The court below, under its equity powers, was free to deny relief by the declaratory-judgment procedure, and its judgment should now be modified so as to be without prejudice to appellants’ rights and remedies to recover damages not only against the appellee for its alleged trespass, but also upon the injunction bond that was given as a condition precedent to the issuance of the restraining order. In Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Huffman, 319 U.S. 293, at p. 300, 63 S.Ct. 1070, 1074, 87 L.Ed. 1407, the court said: “The jurisdiction of the district court in the present suit, praying an adjudication of rights in anticipation of their threatened infringement, is analogous to the equity jurisdiction in suits quia timet or for a decree quieting title. See Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U.S. 249, 263, 53 S.Ct. 345, 348, 77 L.Ed. 730, 87 A.L.R. 1191. Called upon to adjudicate what is essentially an equitable cause of action, the district court was as free as in any other suit in equity to grant or withhold the relief prayed, upon equitable grounds. The Declaratory Judgments Act [28 U.S.C.A. §§ 2201, 2202] was not devised to deprive courts of their equity powers or of their freedom to withhold relief upon established equitable principles. It only provided .a new form of procedure for the adjudication of rights in conformity to those principles. The Senate committee report on the bill pointed out that this Court could, in the exercise of its equity power, make rules governing the declaratory judgment procedure. S. Rep. No. 1005, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 6. And the House report declared that ‘large discretion is conferred upon the courts as to whether or not they will administer justice by this procedure.’ H. R. Rep. No. 1264, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 2 ; and see Brillhart v. Excess Ins. Co. of America, 316 U.S. 491, 494, 62 S.Ct. 1173, 1175, 86 L.Ed. 1620; Borchard, Declaratory Judgments (2d Ed.) 312.”