Majority
Headnote
Action to Enforce Notice to School District for Materials Furnished to Contractor for Schoolhouse—Former Judgment in Action After Notice—Breach of Contract—Bes Adjudicata.— An action under section 1184 of the Code of Civil Procedure to enforce a notice of a claim for materials furnished to the contractor for the erection of a schoolhouse, given to the school district as owner under that section, is barred by a judgment rendered in a former action brought after the service of such notice by the same plaintiff against the school district, the members of its board of trustees, and the contractor, to recover damages for the breach of the contract between the contractor and the school district. The plaintiff in such action, in order to bind the school district, should have pleaded and relied upon the notice given under that section.The defendant, through its board of trustees, entered into a written contract with one C. C. Foy, on the fourth day of January, 1908, for the construction of a grammar school building, for the sum of $16,000 in cash and the old school building at the agreed value of $1,000. Under the stipulations of the .contract said building was to be completed ■by the first day of August, 1908.
The plaintiff, prior to the twenty-first day of September, 1908, furnished the said Foy certain materials which, accord
On the said twenty-first day of September, 1908, so the complaint alleges and the evidence shows, “the plaintiff delivered to and served on the said Fairfield School District, and on each of said trustees personally, a certain written notice” in accordance with the following provision of section 1184 of the Code of Civil Procedure: “. . . Any of the persons mentioned in section eleven hundred and eighty-three, except the contractor, may at any time give to the reputed owner a written notice that they have performed labor or furnished materials, or both, to the contractor, or other person acting by authority of the reputed owner, or that they have agreed to do so, stating in general terms the kind of labor or materials, and the name of the person to or for whom the same was done or furnished, or both, and the amount in value, as near as may be, of that already done or furnished, or both, and of the whole agreed to be done or furnished, or both. . •. . ”
This action is prosecuted by plaintiff under the authority of the foregoing provision of the section of the code mentioned.
The answer, in addition to specific denials of the averments of the complaint, sets up a number of special defenses, among which is the following, using the language of the answer:
“And answering further the complaint of plaintiff and as a further and separate defense, defendant alleges that on or about the twenty-seventh day of October, 1908, the said plaintiff commenced an action. in the above-entitled court against the Fairfield School District, in the county of Solano, state of California, Eoy D. Smith, James N. Watson, James Loekie and C. C. Foy, defendants, which action was for the same cause of action as that set forth in the complaint herein; that on the thirtieth day■ of March, 1909, at Fairfield, in said action commenced as aforesaid, and for the same cause of action as set forth in the complaint herein, a judgment was duly given, made and entered, a copy of which judgment is hereto attached, marked Exhibit ‘A,’ and made a part hereof, to which judgment reference is hereby made; that said judgment has never been appealed from and is still in full force and effect.”
The other special defenses pleaded in the answer are that the plaintiff, prior to the commencement of its action, at no time presented to the defendant its alleged claim against the district, “or any claim based upon the items set forth in said complaint; that at no time has the said plaintiff ever presented to said district in the manner and form required by law an itemized statement of any amount due from said district to plaintiff”; that the plaintiff, prior to the twenty-first day .of September, 1908, being unable to complete the building described in the contract, sublet, with the consent of the district, the contract for painting said building and the contract for furnishing and installing blackboards therein to other parties, named in the answer; that said last referred to parties completed said work, and that Foy assigned to them, in the respective amounts to which they were entitled for said work, his claim under said contract for the money due for said work; that said assigned claims, with other like assignments for other work done by other parties, were presented to and accepted by said school district before the twenty-first day of September, 1908, and that “there was nothing due, owing or unpaid to said C. C. Foy from the said Fairfield School District on the said twenty-first day of September, 1908; that the payment of said assigned claims exhausted the funds of said district which it had on hand for the construction of said building. ’ ’
The court’s findings are adverse' to all the material claims made by the defendant, and, accordingly, judgment was rendered and entered in favor of the plaintiff.
This appeal is by the defendant from said judgment and the order denying it a new trial.
We think that the plea and proof of the judgment in the former action, instituted by the plaintiff upon the claim upon which it declares in this action, constitute a complete and conclusive bar to its right to maintain the present action. It will, therefore, be unnecessary to consider at length other points made by the appellant, although we are convinced, from a careful examination of the record, that the findings of the court
The judgment-roll in the former action was introduced and received in evidence. It is expressly admitted by counsel for the respondent that said action was instituted on the twenty-seventh day of October, 1908—subsequent to the date of the service of the notice on the defendant under section 1184 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Although the defendant here and the members of its board of trustees were; with the contractor, made defendants in the former action, and although the first of the two distinct causes of action set up in the complaint in said action was for damages for a breach of the contract between the defendant here and Foy, it is clear from the averments of the complaint in said action that the subject matter thereof is precisely the same as the subject matter of the present action. The complaint in the former action, as does the complaint here, sets out the contract between Foy and the defendant, and alleges that the plaintiff furnished certain materials to Foy to be used in the construction of the school building under said contract between Foy and the defendant, and further alleges, after disclosing that certain payments had been made by Foy on the original amount due plaintiff for the materials so furnished to Foy, that the plaintiff has been damaged in the sum of $2,400.28, precisely the sum which it is alleged in the complaint in the present action is due from Foy to the plaintiff." But it is in effect admitted by counsel for the plaintiff that both actions were founded on or originated out of the same transaction. The point made by the plaintiff is that the judgment in the former action, for reasons which will hereafter be noted, cannot be made to operate as an estoppel here.
In the present action the court made the following finding relative to the judgment in the former action: “On or about
' The foregoing findings are to a great extent mere conclusions of law, and are in line with the theory upon which the respondent argues against the contention of the appellant that the effect of said judgment is to estop the maintenance of the present action, the position of the respondent being that the cause of action of the former action is not the same as the cause of action here, for two reasons, viz.: 1. That the parties to the former are different from or not the same parties as those to the present action; 2. That the former action was an action at law for damages for breach of the contract between Foy and the defendant, and for the neglect of the defendant in not exacting the statutory bond from the contractor, and that the present action is a suit in equity the purpose of which is, in effect, to enforce a lien.
Both positions are obviously untenable.
There could be, it seems to us, no proposition less debatable than that where an action is commenced against a party and a judgment entered for or against him, such judgment, after becoming final, will always operate as an estoppel or bar against the maintenance of another action thereafter brought against such party alone for the same cause, notwithstanding that other parties might have been joined with him in such action, and the subject matter of the action is adjudicated as to all the parties thereto. In other words, it cannot possibly be true that where, as here, a cause of action has been adjudicated as to all the defendants to an action, the judgment
The position that the judgment in the former action cannot be pleaded in this because the one was an action at law and the other a suit in equity is without any sound reason for its support. To sustain that position would be to declare that it is not the subject matter of the action, but the remedy by which a party may seek, judicially, to assert a right that is the test determinative of the applicability of the plea of res adjudicata; but, obviously, the remedy is not, nor could it be, made the criterion without upsetting the very object of pleas in estoppel by judgment. If, for example, a county should proceed by the extraordinary legal remedy of mandamus to compel a county official to turn over to the public treasury certain moneys which, it was charged, he had collected in his official capacity and should lose out on the merits, could not such county official, in an ordinary action at law thereafter brought by the county to recover the same money, interpose with success the plea of estoppel based upon the judgment in mandate ? The question answers itself.
These views are not inconsistent with anything that is said in Lillis v. Emigrant Ditch, 95 Cal. 553 , 558, [ 30 Pac. 1108 ], Parnell v. Hahn, 61 Cal. 131 , 132, Hall v. Susskind, 109 Cal. 203 , 205, [ 41 Pac. 1012 ], Newhall v. Hatch, 134 Cal. 269 , 272, [ 51 L. R. A. 673 , 66 Pac. 266 ]; M cCormick v. Gross, 135 Cal.
Now, the effect of the service of the notice mentioned in section 1184 of the Code of Civil Procedure upon the defendant by the plaintiff was to subrogate the latter to the right Foy had to any money held by the defendant as part of the contract price for the erection of the building. The notice, in other words, operated as an equitable garnishment, or as an assignment pro tanto of the money due from the defendant to the plaintiff. (Bates v. Santa Barbara Co., 90 Cal. 543 , 547.) The service of said notice was the only means by which the
The rule as here applied is in perfect harmony with the theory upon which estoppels by judgment proceed. In Wolverton v. Baker, 98 Cal. 632 , [ 33 Pac. 732 ], the rule is given as follows: “Where a given matter becomes the subject of litigation in and of adjudication by a court of competent jurisdiction, the court requires the parties to that litigation to bring forward their whole case, and will not, except under special circumstances, permit the same parties to open the same subject of litigation in respect of matter which might have been
Rehearing
In Quirk v. Rooney, 130 Cal. 505 , 510, [ 62 Pac. 825 ], the court says: “We do not think it the policy of the law to allow as many different suits between the same parties in regard to the same subject matter as there might be different modes of establishing title to property.”
The foregoing authorities seem to us to be decisive of the ease here upon the question of estoppel.
The judgment and order are, therefore, reversed.
Chipman, P. J., and Burnett, J., concurred.
A petition for a rehearing of this cause was denied by the district court of appeal on October 5, 1912, and the following opinion then rendered thereon:
In the petition for rehearing of this cause before this court, counsel for the respondent] while conceding that there is an appeal from the order denying the defendant’s motion for a new trial, insistías they originally insisted, that there is no appeal from the judgment. The judgment was entered on October 4, 1911. The notice of motion for a new trial was served and filed on the fourteenth day of October, 1911, from which circumstance it is assumed that the defendant must have had actual notice of the rendition and entry of judgment at that time. We think this assumption is correct, and that the defendant must necessarily have had such notice of the fact of the entry of judgment, otherwise the intention to move for a new trial would not have been noticed. The appeal from the judgment was taken on Feb
By section 939 of the Code of Civil Procedure—one of the sections- prescribing the former exclusive method of taking an appeal from a judgment and which method of so appealing may still be resorted to—it is provided that an appeal from the judgment may be taken within six months after the entry of judgment. Section 940 of the same code provides, however, that an appeal so taken “is ineffectual for any purpose, unless within five days after service of the notice of appeal, an undertaking be filed,” etc., “to the effect that the appellant will pay all damages and costs which may be awarded against him on the appeal, or on a dismissal thereof,” etc. (Id., sec. 941.)
The appellant having failed to-file an undertaking as prescribed by those sections, it is claimed that, if its appeal from the judgment was attempted under the old method, it has also failed in such attempt.
We are not prepared to say that, so far as an undertaking is concerned, the provisions of sections 940 and 941, requiring and pointing out the requisites of such obligation on the part of the appealing party, should not be observed in order to render an appeal from the judgment available to such party. We shall, therefore, treat the attempted appeal from the judgment here as futile and consequently not reviewable.
But the question whether the findings are supported by the evidence may be reviewed on the appeal from the order, and a review of that question is all that is involved in the decision of this court on this appeal. In the former opinion we held that the evidence does not support the finding that the cause of action declared upon in the first action by the plaintiff
Upon the main question, this court has been unable to take any other view than that the facts as disclosed by the evidence present clear grounds for the application of the rule. of res adjudicata.
In accordance with the views herein set forth, the judgment heretofore entered herein will be, and the same is hereby, amended so that it will read: “The appeal from the judgment is dismissed and the order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial is reversed.”
. The petition for rehearing is denied.
Burnett, J., and Chipman, P. J., concurred.
Cases cited
- Lillis v. Emigrant Ditch Co. 95 Cal. 553 at 558 p. 594
- Parnell v. Hahn 61 Cal. 131 at 132 p. 594, p. 595
- Newhall v. Hatch 134 Cal. 269 at 272 p. 594
- Laguna Drainage District v. Charles Martin Co. 5 Cal. App. 166 at 169 p. 595
- Bates v. County of Santa Barbara 90 Cal. 543 at 547 p. 595
- Flynn v. Hite 107 Cal. 455 p. 598
- Silverston v. Mercantile Trust Co. 18 Cal. App. 180 p. 598
- Quirk v. Rooney 130 Cal. 505 at 510 p. 598
- In re the Estate of McPhee 154 Cal. 385 at 392 p. 599
- Mitchell v. California & Oregon Steamship Co. 154 Cal. 731 at 733 p. 599