Kersh Lake Drainage District of Jefferson, Lincoln and Desha Counties v. Johnson

by the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

309 U.S. 485

KERSH LAKE DRAINAGE DISTRICT ET AL.  v.  JOHNSON

Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Arkansas

No. 595.  Argued: Mar. 8, 1940 --- Decided: Mar. 25, 1940

1. A decision by the highest court of a State as to the jurisdiction, under the state law, of an inferior court of the State, is binding here. P. 489.

2. In a suit in a state court of Arkansas brought by the commissioners of a drainage district of that State to collect drainage taxes, the suit having been instituted pursuant to a federal court decree compelling extension and collection of such taxes to satisfy certificates of indebtedness issued by the district, prior state chancery court decrees adjudging a landowner's drainage taxes fully paid and his lands free from any further liability therefor were treated as res judicata. Held:

⁠(1) Certificate holders were not deprived of their property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, even though they were not parties to and had no notice of the chancery court proceedings. Pp. 490-491.

⁠The certificate holders were charged with notice of and bound by relevant statutes of the State in existence when the certificates were issued. Those statutes provided for determination of proportionate liabilities of lands in the district by chancery proceedings between the commissioners and landowners, with no requirement of notice to creditors of the district. The commissioners as parties to the proceedings in the chancery court had appropriately asserted the lien for benefit of the certificate holders, and the latter are bound by the decrees.

⁠(2) Issues of fraud and collusion in this case raise no questions which the highest court of the State was not competent finally to decide; and the decision of that court that no fraud or collusion was shown is accepted here. P. 492.

⁠(3) Irrespective of whether the drainage district was empowered to represent the landowners when the extension of taxes as a whole was ordered, the federal court judgment did not foreclose personal defenses which individual landowners might plead in suits for collection; and the refusal of the state court to accept the federal court judgment as determinative of the individual landowner's [p486] liability did not deny full faith and credit to such judgment. P. 492.

198 Ark. 743; 131 S. W. 2d 620, affirmed

Certiorari, post, p. 642, to review the reversal of a decree against a landowner in a suit to enforce collection of drainage district taxes.

Messrs. George B. Rose and George Rose Smith for petitioners.

A state court may not enjoin the collection of a tax ordered by a federal court to be levied and collected for the purpose of paying a judgment rendered therein. Riggs v. Johnson County, 6 Wall. 166; United States v. Council of Keokuk, 6 Wall. 514; Supervisors v. Durant, 9 Wall. 415; Mayor v. Lord, 9 Wall. 409; Hawley v. Fairbanks, 108 U.S. 543; Gaines v. Springer, 46 Ark. 502.

The court below denied full faith and credit to the judgment of the federal court. The plea that the state court injunctions barred the collection of the taxes had been overruled by the federal court. Art. IV, § 1; paragraph 2 of Art. VI of the Const.; R.S. § 905; Chandler v. Peketz, 297 U.S. 609; Stoll v. Gottlieb, 305 U.S. 165; Knights of Pythias v. Meyer, 265 U.S. 30–33; Hancock National Bank v. Farnum, 176 U.S. 640; Metcalf v. Watertown, 153 U.S. 671; Dupaseur v. Rochereau, 21 Wall. 130, 134; Crescent City Co. v. Butchers' Union, 120 U.S. 141, 146; Pittsburgh Railway Co. v. Long Island L. & T. Co., 172 U.S. 493, 507; Des Moines Nav. & R. Co. v. Iowa Homestead Co., 123 U.S. 552, 559; Embry v. Palmer, 107 U.S. 3, 10.

The plaintiffs were deprived of their property without due process of law by the ruling that judgments in suits of which the creditors had no notice could be pleaded in bar of the judgment "of the federal court. Moreover, the suits in the state court were collusive. The chief beneficiaries were the Commissioners themselves, who took [p487] no appeal, although the state supreme court had many times decided that the benefits bore interest, and would certainly have reversed. Windsor v. McVeigh, 93 U.S. 274; Hagar v. Reclamation Dist. No. 108, 111 U.S. 701; Ochoa v. Hernandez, 230 U.S. 139; Scott v. McNeal, 154 U.S. 34; Hale v. Finch, 104 U.S. 261; Wabash Railroad v. Adelbert College, 208 U.S. 39; Empire v. Darlington, 101 U.S. 87; Brooklyn v. Insurance Co., 99 U.S. 362.

Mr. Walter G. Riddick, with whom Mr. Charles T. Coleman was on the brief, for respondent.