Equity court

“ It is true that the remedy or defense which will oust an equity court of jurisdiction must be as complete and as adequate, as sufficient and as final, as the remedy in equity, or else the latter court retains jurisdiction ”

“ And our review of the injunction as an exercise of the equity power granted by 26 U.S.C. § 7402 (a) must be in light of the public interest involved: 'Courts of equity may, and frequently do, go much farther both to give and withhold relief in furtherance of the public interest than they are accustomed to go when only private interests are involved.' Virginian R. Co. ”

“ When Congress entrusts to an equity court the enforcement of prohibitions contained in a regulatory enactment, it must be taken to have acted cognizant of the historic power of equity to provide complete relief in light of the statutory purposes. ”

“ In selecting a remedy the lower courts should exercise "the sound discretion which guides the determinations of courts of equity," keeping in mind the role of equity as 'the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims.' Hecht Co. ”

“ Thompson, supra, and the state courts [2] have recognized and applied the statutory bar to an action at law to equity suits brought in aid of the legal right to recover an assessment upon stockholders. But as we have seen, those cases are referable to the doctrine accepted and applied in the federal courts of equity that equity does not give relief predicated on a legal right which the statute has barred. ”

“ The reliance on the analogy of equity power to enjoin proceedings in other courts has elements of fiction in this day of one form of action. The incongruity of taking jurisdiction from a stay in a law type and denying jurisdiction in an equity type proceeding springs from the persistence of outmoded procedural differentiations. ”

“ Justice STORY said that an information in equity at the suit of the attorney general would lie in cases of purpresture and public nuisance; the jurisdiction of courts of equity being sustained because of 'their ability to give a more complete and perfect remedy than is attainable at law, in order to prevent irreparable mischief, and also to suppress oppressive and vexatious litigations.' Eq. ”

“ On the contrary, the more general principle established in this country seems to be that wherever an assignee has an equitable right or interest in a debt or other property, (as the assignee of a debt certainly has,) then a court of equity is the proper forum to enforce it ”

“ In such instances the equity court had discretion to enjoin the later lawsuit in order to allow the whole dispute to be determined in one case in one court. [5] Reasoning by analogy, the Court of Appeals held it was not an abuse of discretion for the district judge, acting under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 42 (b) , to try the equitable cause first even though this might, through collateral estoppel, prevent a full jury trial of the counterclaim and cross-claim which were as effectively stopped as by an equity injunction. ”

“ A court of equity is, therefore, hampered in the exercise of its jurisdiction by the necessity of enjoining the tax complained of, in whole or in part, without any power of doing complete justice by making, or causing to be made, a new assessment on any principle it may decide to be the right one. ”

“ Defendants especially demur to the right of plaintiffs to bring their bill in equity, as neither the law nor the jurisprudence of this state authorizes or provides suits in equity, and especially is this so as to real estate situated in the state. ”

“ It is indisputable that the court was clearly right, as a matter of law, in holding that a court of equity in any event would not afford relief where there had been such laches as would cause it to be inequitable to do so. ”

“ And though we have repeatedly decided in this court that the statute of a state cannot control the mode of procedure in equity cases in Federal courts, nor deprive them of their separate equity jurisdiction, we have also held that, where a statute of a state created a new right or provided a new remedy, the Federal courts will enforce that right, either on the common-law or equity side of its docket, as the nature of the new right or new remedy requires. ”

“ Independently of any statute of limitations, courts of equity uniformly decline to assist a person who has slept upon his rights, and shows no excuse for his laches in asserting them. 'A court of equity,' said Lord CAMDEN, 'has always refused its aid to stale demands, where the party slept upon his rights, and acquiesced for a great length of time. ”

“ Even if the enlarged powers of a court of bankruptcy over the estate under its control to put out of view, and the subject be looked at as a mere question of equitable jurisdiction, it may not be doubted that a court of equity in one state in a proper case could compel a defendant before it to convey property situated in another state. ”

“ Again, it is well established that equity will entertain jurisdiction, and afford relief against the collection of a judgment, where, in justice and good conscience, it ought not to be enforced, as where there is a meritorious, equitable defense thereto, which could not have been set up at law, or which the party was, without fault or negligence, prevented from interposing. ”

“ Courts of equity can no more disregard statutory and constitutional requirements and provisions than can courts of law. They are bound by positive provisions of a statute equally with courts of law, and where the transaction or the contract is declared void because not in compliance with express statutory or constitutional provision, a court of equity cannot interpose to give validity to such transaction or contract, or any part thereof. ”

“ We held that, in this connection, the phrase 'fair and equitable' had become a term of art, that Congress used it in the sense in which it had been used by the courts in reorganization cases, and that whether a plan met the test of fairness and equity long established by judicial decision was not a question to be answered by the creditors and stockholders but by the court as a matter of law. ”

“ Unless a statute then, in so many words, or by an inference which does not admit of a doubt, commands the courts of equity in Virginia to give relief from usurious contracts, by evidence aliunde, without requiring the borrower to pay principal and interest; the law should not be so construed. The great principles of equity, securing complete justice, should not be yielded to light inferences, or doubtful construction. ”

“ As in much else that pertains to equitable jurisdiction, individualization in the exercise of a discretionary power will alone retain equity as a living system and save it from sterility. In the actual exercise of the power to award costs 'as between solicitor and client' all sorts of practical distinctions have been taken in distributing the costs of the burden of the litigation. ”

“ Accordingly a suit in equity to enforce a legal right can be brought only when the court can give more complete and effectual relief, in kind or in degree, on the equity side, than on the common-law side ”

“ In some of those States, courts of law recognise and enforce in suits at law all equitable rights and claims which a court of equity would recognise and enforce; in others, all relief is denied, and such equitable claims and rights are to be considered as mere nullities at law. A construction, therefore, that would adopt the State practice in all its extent, would at once extinguish in such States the exercise of equitable jurisdiction. The acts of Congress have distinguished between remedies at common law and equity, yet this construction would confound them. ”

“ If any characteristic of equity jurisprudence has descended unbrokenly from and within 'the traditional scope of equity as historically evolved in the English Court of Chancery,' it is that statutes of limitations, often in terms applying only to actions at law, have never been deemed to be rigidly applicable as absolute barriers to suits in equity as they are to actions at law. [4] That tradition, it would seem, should be regarded as having been incorporated in the various Acts of Congress which have conferred equity jurisdiction upon the federal courts. ”

“ From the beginning, equity, in the absence of any statute of limitations made applicable to equity suits, has provided its own rule of limitations through the doctrine of laches, the principle that equity will not aid a plaintiff whose unexcused delay, if the suit were allowed, would be prejudicial to the defendant. ”

“ But the right to resort to a Federal court as a court of equity must be founded upon some ground of equitable jurisdiction recognized by the Federal courts, and when, as here, no such ground appears, jurisdiction in equity cannot be maintained. ”

“ If it cannot be made, then courts of equity will not interfere. If it can be made, then, if the penalty is to secure the mere payment of money, courts of equity will relieve the party upon paying the principal and interest. If it is to secure the performance of some collateral act or undertaking, then courts of equity will retain the bill, and will direct an issue of quantum damnificatus; and when the amount of the damages is ascertained by a jury, upon the trial of such an issue, they will grant relief upon payment of such damages.' Eq. ”

“ It is, as we have said, a familiar principle governing the exercise of equity jurisdiction of federal courts that equitable relief may be invoked only when the plaintiff is without other adequate remedy. ”

“ Thus, the justification for equity's deciding legal issues once it obtains jurisdiction, and refusing to dismiss a case, merely because subsequently a legal remedy becomes available, must be re-evaluated in the light of the liberal joinder provisions of the Federal Rules which allow legal and equitable causes to be brought and resolved in one civil action. ”

“ The inquiry at once suggests itself upon reading the bill in this case, why does the plaintiff file it? Can any relief be had in this suit which could not be obtained in the suit sought to be enjoined? It is an elementary principle of equity law that, when full and adequate relief can be obtained in a suit at law, a suit in equity cannot be maintained. ”

“ Where the remedy at law is 'plain, adequate, and complete', it is the one which must be pursued even for the protection of any federal right. That practice of the federal equity courts was given further recognition and sanction by Congress in the Johnson Act, 48 Stat. ”