mencing like actions as threatened. A temporary injunction was granted, but afterward vacated on motion of the defendants. The order of the lower court dissolving the injunction was held to be error. Judge Marshall, speaking for the supreme court, after saying that the right of the company to collect the disputed fares depended upon questions of law arising on undisputed facts, and that the company could not be disturbed by daily contests with patrons over its right to the fares demanded without great and irreparable injury to its interests, and great prejudice to the traveling public, continued: "Respondent's counsel say it is an established principle of equity jurisprudence that the jurisdiction of equity does not extend to barring the privilege of a person to vindicate his legal rights at law. That is a general, but by no means universal, rule. There are many exceptions to it, sufficient to meet all situations where wrongs cannot be adequately prevented or redressed otherwise than by putting restraint upon the liberty of a person to use legal remedies. . . . . Assuming that the parties were acting in good faith, one case was as good as a multitude for all practicable purposes." And the federal courts have very generally upheld the principle that mere community of interest in the questions of law and fact involved in the controversy is sufficient to justify the exercise of equity jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits. Several cases from these courts which sustain this general principle were reviewed on pages 1000 to 1002, inclusive, of our note to Illinois Steel Co. v. Schroeder, 126 Am. St. Rep. 991, and though the particular point involved in those cases, and upon which the decisions rested, might not make them applicable to our present discussion, the language used by the courts in some of them, as there quoted, is broad enough to make some of those cases worthy of examination in connection with our present topic; especially is this true of the language used by Mr. Justice Peckham in Hale v. Allinson, 188 U. S. 56, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 244, 47 L. ed. 380. Likewise, in Louisville etc. Co. v. Ohio Valley Improvement & C. Co. (C. C.), 57 Fed. 42, it was held that a railroad company whose guaranty had been fraudulently indorsed upon several hundred bonds issued by another company could maintain a bill in equity against the holders thereof to cancel the guaranty, on the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits, although it might have a good defense at law to each of the bonds. Though there was an independent equity in this case which clearly entitled the complainant to the relief demanded, the court said that aside from that, the community of interest shown in the questions of law and fact involved in the controversy was sufficient to justify the interposition of equity on the ground of avoiding a multiplicity of suits. Said the circuit judge: "Upon another ground, altogether, I am of opinion that equity has jurisdiction to maintain this bill, and that is to prevent a multiplicity of suits. . . . . There has been much conflict of authority as to the circumstances which will justify a court of equity in taking jurisdiction to prevent a multiplicity of suits; but an examination of numer .... ous authorities brings one to the conclusion that where a complainant may be subjected to a multitude of separate suits by separate claimants, and the judgment in one case would not be conclusive in others, a case arises for equitable jurisdiction, if the defendants have a community of interest in the questions at issue, and in the kind of relief sought, by reason of the common origin of their several claims." And the same principle was upheld in Bailey v. Tillinghast, 99 Fed. 801, 40 C. C. A. 93, with reference to the right of the receiver of an insolvent national bank to maintain a bill in equity against a large number of stockholders to enforce an assessment against them, the court saying the hill was maintainable for the purpose of preventing a multiplicity of suits, and that in order to bring it within the jurisdiction of equity, it was not necessary "that there should be any privity of interest between the stockholders, other than that in the question involved and the kind of relief sought." Likewise in Wyman v. Bowman, 127 Fed. 257, 62 C. C. A. 189, the question was whether a receiver of the property of a corporation could maintain a bill in equity against nine individuals who were once stockholders in the corporation, to compel them to pay the unpaid part of their subscriptions to the stock of the corporation. One branch of the relief sought was the avoidance of an alleged fraudulent preference of a release of the assessment and of an assignment to the defendants of the certificate of that assessment upon the stock of the corporation, and this was indispensable to a successful prosecution of suits at law against the stockholders for recovery of the unpaid subscriptions; but it was held that independent of this ground for relief in equity, the bill was maintainable upon the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits. Said Circuit Judge Sanborn: "If, however, the concession were made that the complainant could have maintained nine separate actions at law-one against each of the nine defendants in this suit-and could in those actions have disregarded the releases and assignments, and have recovered the entire fifty per cent alleged to have been unpaid upon the subscriptions, nevertheless, the community of interest of the defendants in every question of law and of fact involved in the controversies presented by this suit, the inadequacy of the nine separate actions at law to attain the ends of justice, the greater convenience and less expense for all parties in the determination of the controversies here presented in a single suit in equity, are in themselves sufficient to sustain the jurisdiction of the court below on the ground that this suit avoids a multiplicity of actions at law." The court then differentiated this case from that of Hale v. Allinson, 188 U. S. 56, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 244, 47 L. ed. 380, and showed that the ruling in the present case was fully sustained by the general doctrine announced by the supreme court in the Hale case, and which, as we have said, will be found quoted on page 1002 of the note to Illinois Steel Co. v. Schroeder, 126 Am. St. Rep. 991. Again, the question of when equity should interfere to prevent a multiplicity of suits was quite recently before the supreme court of the United States in Bitterman v. Louisville & N. R. R. Co., 207 U. S. 205, 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 91, 52 L. ed. 171, 12 Ann. Cas. 693, and the doctrine that a community of interest in the questions of law and fact involved in the controversy was sufficient to sustain the jurisdiction was fully upheld. The bill filed in this case, was in behalf of the railroad company to enjoin numerous ticket brokers from dealing in nontransferable railroad tickets issued by the company at reduced rates. The case was hotly contested by eminent counsel on both sides; those for the defendants claiming that the complainant had an adequate remedy at law, and that the bill was objectionable for multifariousness; while counsel for complainant insisted a court of equity should grant injunctive relief upon the ground of preventing a multiplicity of suits. In holding that an injunction had been properly granted by the circuit court of appeals (144 Fed. 34, 75 C. C. A. 192), Mr. Justice White, after speaking of other reasons why the remedy at law was inadequate, said: "And the multiplicity of suits necessarily to be engendered if redress was sought at law-all establish the inadequacy of a legal remedy and the necessity for the intervention of equity." And replying to the contention that the bill was multifarious the same justice continued: "The acts complained of as to each defendant were of a like character, their operation and effect upon the rights of the complainant were identical, the relief sought against each defendant was the same, and the defenses which might be interposed were common to each defendant and involved like legal questions. Under these conditions the case is brought within the principle laid down in Hale v. Allinson, 188 U. S. 56, 77, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 244, 47 L. ed. 380, 392." b. Where Community of Interest in the Subject Matter of the Controversy is Held Necessary to Justify Interference of a Court of Equity on Ground of Preventing a Multiplicity of Suits.-There are at least two very forcible decisions which are in direct conflict with the doctrine announced in the principal case (ante, p. 20), where equitable relief was sought under similar circumstances, namely, to restrain the prosecution of numerous actions at law, brought by separate individuals against a single body to recover damages arising from a single tort, until the common defense can be established. The older and, perhaps, the leading case is that of Tribette v. Illinois Central R. R. Co., 70 Miss. 182, 35 Am. St. Rep. 642, 12 South. 32, 19 L. R. A. 660. The decision in this case, as we have previously noticed, seems to have been repudiated by the same court in later cases, especially in Whitlock v. Yazoo etc. Ry. Co., 91 Miss. 779, 45 South. 861, though no reference to it is there made. But for the reason that the courts of other states which insist that mere community of interest in the questions of law and fact involved in the controversy will not justify invoking the aid of equity to prevent a multiplicity of suits, but that there must be a community of interest in the subject matter of the controversy to authorize equitable jurisdiction upon this ground, all refer to Tribette v. Illinois Cent. etc. R. R. Co., 70 Miss. 182, 35 Am. St. Rep. 612, 12 South. 32, 19 L. R. A. 660, as authority, and are content to rest their decision upon what they term the "unanswerable logic" of that opinion; and for the further reason that this opinion has been reprinted and quoted in some of the standard texts, we deem it wise to review this case at some length and quote those portions of the opinion which have commanded such respect from both text-writers and the courts of other jurisdictions. In this case, a number of different owners of property in a town, destroyed by fire from sparks emitted from an engine of the defendant railway company, severally sued the company to recover damages for their respective losses by said fire, alleged to have resulted from the negligence of the company. While these actions were pending the railway company filed its bill against the several plaintiffs alleging that all the damages claimed grew out of the same occurrence, and depended for their solution upon the same questions of fact and law, and prayed to enjoin the prosecution of the several separate actions and to have the controversy settled in one suit in equity. The injunction was granted, and a subsequent motion to dissolve being denied, the case was presented on appeal upon the single question whether the community of interest in the questions of law and fact involved justified issuance of the injunction. It was held that it did not, and the judgment of the lower court refusing to grant the motion to dissolve was reversed and the injunction dissolved. Chief Justice Campbell, delivering the opinion of the court, said: “The question presented is as to the rightfulness of the suit against the defendants, on the sole ground that their several actions at law involve the very same matters of fact and law, without any other community of interest between them. The granting and maintaining the injunction are fully sustained by Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence, volume 1, section 255 et seq., and it is probable that any judge authorized would have granted the injunction upon the text cited. But we affirm, after careful examination and full consideration, that Pomeroy is not sustained in his conclusions, stated in section 269 of his most valuable treatise, and that the cases he cited do not maintain the proposition that mere community of interest in the questions of law and fact involved in the general controversy, or in the kind and form of relief demanded and obtained by or against each individual member of the numerous body, is ground for the interposition of chancery to settle, in one suit, the several controversies. There is no such doctrine in the books, and the zeal of the learned and usually accurate writer mentioned to maintain a theory has betrayed him into error on this subject. It has so blinded him as to cause the confounding of distinct things in his view of this subject, to wit, joinder of parties, and avoidance of multiplicity of suits. . . . . The cases established this proposition, viz., where each of several may proceed or be proceeded against in equity, their joinder as plaintiffs or defendants in one suit is not objectionable; but this is a very different question from that whether, merely because many actions at law arise out of the same transaction or occurrence, and depend on the same matters of fact and law, all may proceed or be proceeded against jointly in one suit in chancery; and it is believed it has never |