Where a suit is brought against defendants who claim to act as
officers of a state and, under color of an unconstitutional
statute, commit acts of wrong and injury to the property of the
plaintiff, to recover money or property in their hands unlawfully
taken by them in behalf of the state, or for compensation for
damages, or, in a proper case, for an injunction to prevent such
wrong and injury, or for a mandamus in a like case to enforce the
performance of a plain legal duty, purely ministerial, such suit is
not, within the meaning of the Eleventh Amendment to the
Constitution, an action against the state.
Circuit courts of the United States will restrain a state
officer from executing an unconstitutional statute of the state
when to execute it would be to violate rights and privileges of the
complainant that had been
Page 165 U. S. 108
guaranteed by the Constitution and would do irreparable damage
and injury to him.
In re Tyler, 149 U. S. 164,
affirmed and followed on these points.
It was alleged in the bill, and their was evidence to show, that
the complainant intended to import for his own use, from time to
time as he might need the same, ales, wines, and liquors, the
products of other states, of the value exceeding two thousand
dollars, which were threatened to be seized by the state
constables, claiming to act under the Dispensary Law, and the
agreed statement of facts contained the following statements:
"Previous to filing of bill and temporary injunction granted in
this case, the state constables seized, intended and threatened to
seize in future, all intoxicating liquors whatsoever coming into
the state from other states and foreign countries, and to carry out
in full all the provisions of the Dispensary Law of January 2,
1895, and the value of the right of importation of ales, wines, and
other liquors, products of other states and countries, is of the
value of two thousand dollars and upwards, and the difference in
the price to the consumer, like the plaintiff, of such liquor
bought at the state dispensary of South Carolina and bought out of
the state is about fifty to seventy-five percent in favor of
imported liquors."
Held that such statements sufficiently concede that the
pecuniary value of plaintiff's rights in controversy exceed the
value of two thousand dollars, and that it cannot be reasonably
claimed that the plaintiff must postpone his application to the
circuit court as a court of equity until his property to an amount
exceeding in value two thousand dollars has been actually seized
and confiscated, and when the preventive remedy by injunction would
be of no avail.
The interest that will allow parties to join in a bill of
complaint, or that will enable the court to dispense with the
presence of all the parties, when numerous, except to a determinate
number, is not only an interest in the question, but one in common
in the subject matter of the suit -- a community of interest
growing out of the nature and condition of the right in
dispute.
The decree is also objectionable because it enjoins persons not
parties to the suit, as this is not a case where the defendants
named represent those not named, and there is not alleged any
conspiracy between the parties defendant and other unknown parties,
but the acts complained of are tortious, and do not grow out of any
common action or agreement between constables and sheriffs of the
State of South Carolina.
In the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of
South Carolina, on April 25, 1895, James Donald, a citizen of the
United States and of the State of South Carolina, in his own
behalf, and on behalf of all other persons in the State of South
Carolina, as importers for their own use and consumers of the
wines, ales, and spirituous liquors, the products of other states
and foreign countries, filed a bill in equity against J. M.
Scott,
Page 165 U. S. 109
M. T. Holley, E. C. Beach, and R. M. Gardner, claiming to act as
constables of the State of South Carolina, and all other persons
whomsoever claiming to act as such constables or as county
sheriffs, municipal policemen, or executive officers, or in any
capacity whatever, under or by virtue of an Act of the General
Assembly of the State of South Carolina approved January 2, 1895,
and generally known as the "Dispensary Law."
The bill alleged that the defendants named had on several
occasions seized and carried away packages of wines and liquors
belonging to the plaintiff, being products of the States of New
York, Maryland, and California, respectively, and imported by the
plaintiff for his own use and consumption, and not intended for
sale, barter, or exchange by the plaintiff within the State of
South Carolina; and that the defendants claimed, in so doing, to
act by virtue of the said Act of January 2, 1895, which act was
alleged by the plaintiff to be void and unconstitutional and to
furnish no protection to the said defendants in their said acts of
trespass and seizure. The bill further alleged that the plaintiff
had brought several actions at law against the said defendants in
the circuit court of the United States for damages caused by the
said unlawful acts, which said suits were still pending; that,
notwithstanding the bringing of said suits, the said defendants and
others, constables of the State of South Carolina, have continued
to seize and carry away ales, wines, and spirituous liquors of the
plaintiff and of other persons in the State of South Carolina,
imported from other states and foreign countries, and threaten to
continue so to do. The bill further alleges that protection of the
plaintiff's rights by actions at law involved a multiplicity of
suits against said constables; and that, by said Dispensary Act,
the remedy of replevin was denied to the plaintiff in the courts of
South Carolina; and that all said constables were wholly
irresponsible financially, and unable to respond in damages; and
that the plaintiff's constitutional rights, privileges, and
immunities were now being, and are threatened to be continually,
invaded and grossly violated, without redress and to his
irreparable injury. The bill avers that the said
Page 165 U. S. 110
right to import wines and spirituous liquors for his own use and
consumption is of the money value of upward of $2,000, and also
that the value of said articles intended to be imported from other
states and foreign countries by this plaintiff for his own use and
consumption, from time to time, and which are threatened to be
seized by said constables, exceeds the sum of $2,000.
The plaintiff prayed for a preliminary and a final injunction,
restraining the defendants named, and all other persons claiming to
act as constables, and all sheriffs, policemen, and other officers,
acting or claiming to act under said Dispensary Act, from seizing
and carrying away wines or spirituous liquors imported or brought
into the State of South Carolina for his own use or consumption,
and from forcibly entering or attempting to search the dwelling
house of the plaintiff for any such articles, and from hindering
and preventing the plaintiff, or any other person, from importing,
holding, possessing, and using the said liquors so imported.
After argument, a preliminary injunction was issued on May 9,
1895. 67 F. 854. The plaintiff had leave to amend his bill by
adding the averment that the other said persons on behalf of whom
he sues, to-wit, importers for their own use and consumers in the
State of South Carolina of such ales, wines, and spirituous liquors
as aforesaid, are too numerous to make parties complainant to the
bill, and that some of them are unknown.
Subsequently the defendants pleaded to the jurisdiction of the
court, 1st, because the suit is in effect a suit against the state,
2d, because the bill presents no question arising under the
constitution or laws of the United States, 3d, because the bill
presents no case upon which the jurisdiction of a court of equity
can be founded, there being plain and adequate remedies at law for
the injuries complained of, and 4th, because plaintiff hath not
made or stated in his bill a case to entitle him to the relief
prayed for. They also answered, admitting some and denying others
of the allegations of the bill. A replication was filed. Afterwards
an agreed statement of facts was filed. Among the facts so stated
was the fact that,
Page 165 U. S. 111
in the several actions at law mentioned in the bill, final
judgments against the defendants had upon trial been obtained; that
notwithstanding said recoveries and notwithstanding the pendency of
this bill, other seizures of wines and liquors imported by the
plaintiff and by other persons named had been made, that the
plaintiff testified that he intends to import for his own use from
time to time, as he may need the same, ales, wines, and liquors,
the products of other states, of the value exceeding $2,000, which
are threatened to be seized by the state constables, claiming to
act under the dispensary law, that the value of the right of
importation of ales, wines, and other liquors, products of other
states and countries, is of the value of $2,000 and upward, that
the difference in the price to the consumer, like the plaintiff, of
such liquor bought at the state dispensary of South Carolina, and
that bought out of the state, is about 50 to 75 percent. in favor
of imported liquors, that the defendants, state constables, who
have made the seizures, are all insolvent and financially
irresponsible except Chief Constable Holley, who had not personally
made any seizure of plaintiff's liquors, except the first
seizure.
The case came on to be heard on the pleadings and the agreed
statement of facts, and thereupon the injunction theretofore
granted was made perpetual. An assignment of errors was filed, and
an appeal was allowed to this Court.
MR. JUSTICE SHIRAS, after stating the facts in the foregoing
language, delivered the opinion of the Court.
Having, in the cases at law in which the opinion has just been
delivered, and for reasons therein given, reached the conclusion
that the Dispensary Law of South Carolina, approved January 2,
1895, is so far unconstitutional and void that this
Page 165 U. S. 112
plaintiff can maintain an action at law against these defendants
for seizing his liquors, we are called upon now to consider whether
there is a valid remedy, by was of injunction, to restrain
executive officers from continued and repeated acts of trespass in
seizing and carrying away, and confiscating for the use of the
state, the property of the complainant so imported.
The bill prays for an injunction, on the several grounds of
irreparable damage; that the acts complained of prevent the
exercise by the complainant of his right to import without
molestation lawful commodities, the products of other states; to
avoid multiplicity of suits; the want of adequate remedies at
law.
The objections to proceedings against state officers by
injunction are that it is, in effect, proceeding against the state
itself, and that it interferes with the official discretion vested
in the officers. The answer to such objections is found in a long
line of decisions of this court:
Osborn v.
Bank, 9 Wheat. 738;
Dodge v.
Woolsey, 18 How. 331;
Board of Liquidation v.
McComb, 92 U. S. 531;
Cumings v. National Bank, 101 U.
S. 153;
Memphis & Little Rock Railroad v.
Railroad Commissioners, 112 U. S. 609;
Virginia Coupon Cases, 114 U. S. 295,
114 U. S. 315;
Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 140 U. S. 1;
Belknap v. Schild, 161 U. S. 10,
161 U. S.
18.
In re Tyler, 149 U. S. 164, was
a case where the receiver of the South Carolina Railway Company
filed a bill in equity in the circuit court of the United States
against the treasurers and sheriffs, eighteen in number, in the
counties through which the railroads in his possession passed,
alleging that the treasurers were about to issue tax executions,
and the sheriffs about to levy and seize thereunder property of the
railway company for the taxes for the fiscal year beginning
November 1, 1890. The bill alleged that the taxes for that fiscal
year were unconstitutional and illegal in part upon various
grounds; that the levy and sale of the road would cause irreparable
injury; that there was no adequate remedy at law; that a
multiplicity of suits would be necessary to protect his rights if
he sued at law; and prayed for an injunction against the issue and
levy of the tax warrants in question. After
Page 165 U. S. 113
answer and full hearing, the court issued an injunction
restraining M. V. Tyler, Sheriff of Aiken County, his deputies and
agents, from further intermeddling, interfering with, keeping, and
holding the personal property distrained upon by him belonging to
the petitioner, as receiver, and ordering that the said property
should be restored to the custody of the receiver. It being shown
subsequently by affidavits that Tyler refused to comply with the
injunction, and continued to hold and detain said property, the
court adjudged him guilty of contempt, imposed a fine upon him, and
committed him to the custody of the marshal of the court until he
should pay said fine or purge himself of his contempt. A petition
for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in this Court, and, upon the
hearing of the cause, it was mainly argued on behalf of the
petitioner that the proceedings in the circuit court were
substantially a suit against the State of South Carolina, and that,
by its mandatory injunction upon its officers, the court divested
the state of its possession.
This Court denied the writ, and, speaking through THE CHIEF
JUSTICE, thus expressed the conclusion reached in the previous
cases, many of which were cited in the argument:
"The object of this petition was to protect the property, but
even if it were to be regarded as a plenary bill in equity properly
brought for the purpose of testing the legality of the tax, we
ought to add that, in our judgment, it would not be obnoxious to
the objection of being a suit against the state. It is unnecessary
to retravel the ground so often traversed by this Court in
exposition and application of the Eleventh Amendment. The subject
was but recently considered in
Pennoyer v. McConnaughy,
140 U. S.
1, in which Mr. Justice Lamar, delivering the opinion of
the Court, cites and reviews a large number of cases. The result
was correctly stated to be that where a suit is brought against
defendants who claim to act as officers of a state, and, under
color of an unconstitutional statute, commit acts of wrong and
injury to the property of the plaintiff, to recover money or
property in their hands unlawfully taken by them in behalf of the
state, or for compensation for damages, or, in a proper case, for
an
Page 165 U. S. 114
injunction to prevent such wrong and injury, or for a mandamus
in a like case to enforce the performance of a plain legal duty,
purely ministerial, such suit is not, within the meaning of the
amendment, an action against the state."
"And while it is conceded that the principle stated by Chief
Justice Marshall in the leading case of
Osborn v. Bank of United
States, 9 Wheat. 738 that, 'in all cases where
jurisdiction depends on the party, it is the party named in the
record,' and that the 'Eleventh Amendment is limited to those suits
in which a state is a party to the record,' had been qualified to a
certain degree in some of the subsequent decisions of this Court,
yet it was also rightly declared that the general doctrine there
announced, that the circuit courts of the United States will
restrain a state officer from executing an unconstitutional statute
of the state when to execute it would be to violate rights and
privileges of the complainant that had been guarantied by the
constitution, and would do irreparable damage and injury to him,
has never been departed from."
Suppose it established that the objections just mentioned fail,
it is suggested that jurisdiction did not exist in the circuit
court because the value in controversy did not exceed the sum of
two thousand dollars. It is alleged in the bill, and there was
evidence to show, that the complainant intends to import for his
own use, from time to time, as he may need the same, ales, wines,
and liquors, the products of other states, of the value exceeding
two thousand dollars, which are threatened to be seized by the
state constables, claiming to act under the Dispensary Law. And the
agreed statement of facts contains the following statements:
"Previous to filing of bill and temporary injunction granted in
this case, the state constable seized, intended and threatened to
seize in future, all intoxicating liquors whatsoever coming into
the state from other states and foreign countries, and to carry out
in full all the provisions of the Dispensary Law of January 2,
1895, and the value of the right of importation of ales, wines, and
other liquors, products of other states and countries, is of the
value of two thousand dollars and upward; and the difference in the
price to the consumer, like the plaintiff, of such liquor
Page 165 U. S. 115
bought at the state dispensary of South Carolina, and bought out
of the state, is about fifty to seventy-five percent in favor of
imported liquors."
Such statements sufficiently concede that the pecuniary value of
plaintiff�s rights in controversy exceeds the value of two
thousand dollars. Nor can it be reasonably claimed that the
plaintiff must postpone his application to the circuit court, as a
court of equity, until his property to an amount exceeding in value
two thousand dollars has been actually seized and confiscated, and
when the preventive remedy by injunction would be of no avail.
But while we think that the complainant was entitled to an
injunction against those defendants who had despoiled him of his
property, and who were threatening to continue so to do, we are
unable to wholly approve the decree entered in this case.
The theory of the decree is that the plaintiff is one of a class
of persons whose rights are infringed and threatened, and that he
so represents such class that he may pray an injunction on behalf
of all persons that constitute it. It is indeed possible that there
may be others in like case with the plaintiff and that such persons
may be numerous, but such a state of facts is too conjectural to
furnish a safe basis upon which a court of equity ought to grant an
injunction. We prefer to accept in this respect the views expressed
by Mr. Justice Nelson in the case of
Cutting v. Gilbert, 5
Blatchford 259. There a bill had been filed by several bankers, as
well for themselves as all others in the same interest, against the
assessor and collector of a certain tax, under the ninety-ninth
section of the Internal Revenue act of June 30, 1864, seeking to
restrain the collection of such tax as illegal, and the learned
justice disposed of the question in the following language:
"This is a bill of peace to quiet the rights of parties, and to
put an end to future litigation. The bill is founded on the idea
that all persons in business as bankers, charged with the tax in
question, have such a unity or joinder of interest in contesting it
that all may join in the bill for that purpose; and that, as
the
Page 165 U. S. 116
parties are so numerous as to make it inconvenient to join all
of them, a determinate number may appear in the name of themselves
and for the rest. I have not been able to concur in this view. The
interest that will allow parties to join in a bill of complaint, or
that will enable the court to dispense with the presence of all the
parties, when numerous, except a determinate number, is not only an
interest in the question, but one in common in the subject matter
of the suit, such as the case of disputes between the lord of a
manor and his tenants, or between the tenants of one manor and
those of another, or in a suit to settle a general fine to be paid
by all the copyhold tenants of a manor in order to prevent a
multiplicity of suits. In all these and the like instances given in
the books, there is a community of interest growing out of the
nature and condition of the right in dispute, for, although there
may not be any privity between the numerous parties, there is a
common title out of which the question arises, and which lies at
the foundation of the proceedings. . . . In the case before me, the
only matter in common among the plaintiffs, or between them and the
defendants, is an interest in the question involved, which alone
cannot lay a foundation for the joinder of parties. There is
scarcely a suit at law or in equity which settles a principle, or
applies a principle to a given state of facts, or in which a
general statute is interpreted, that does not involve a question in
which other parties are interested, as, for instance, the doctrine
of trusts and the statutes of descents, frauds, of wills, and the
like. Yet no lawyer would contend that such an interest would
justify a joinder of parties as plaintiffs in a case arising under
the laws of trusts or under any of the statutes mentioned. The same
may be said of questions arising under the revenue laws, such as
the tariff and excise laws, and which are the subject of litigation
in the courts almost daily. Large classes of persons, other than
the parties to the suit, are interested in the questions involved
and determined. To allow them to be made parties to the suit would
confound the established order of judicial proceedings and lead to
endless perplexity and confusion. "
Page 165 U. S. 117
Similar views prevailed in the case of
Baker v. City of
Portland, 5 Sawyer 566, where it was held by District Judge
Deady, Mr. Justice Field concurring, that any number of persons who
may from time to time engaged in making street improvements under
several and distinct contracts with a city are not therefore a
class of persons having a common interest in the subject of street
improvements concerning which any one or more may sue for the
whole.
The decree is also objectionable because it enjoins persons not
parties to the suit. This is not a case where the defendants named
represent those not named. Nor is there alleged any conspiracy
between the parties defendant and other unknown parties. The acts
complained of are tortious, and do not grow out of any common
action or agreement between constables and sheriffs of the State of
South Carolina. We have, indeed, a right to presume that such
officers, though not named in this suit, will, when advised that
certain provisions of the act in question have been pronounced
unconstitutional by the court to which the constitution of the
United States refers such questions, voluntarily refrain from
enforcing such provisions, but we do not think it comports with
well settled principles of equity procedure to include them in an
injunction in a suit in which they were not heard or represented,
or to subject them to penalties for contempt in disregarding such
an injunction.
Fellows v. Fellows, 4 John.Chan. 25, citing
Iveson v. Harris, 7 Ves. 257.
The decree of the court below should therefore be amended by
being restricted to the parties named as plaintiff and defendants
in the bill, and this is directed to be done, and it is
otherwise
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE BROWN dissents.
MR. JUSTICE BREWER did not hear the argument, and took no part
in the decision of this case.
