Opinion
No. 38779.
September 24, 1929. Rehearing Denied February 15, 1930.
INJUNCTION: Preliminary and Interlocutory Injunctions — Inevitable Dissolution. A temporary injunction in an untried action in one county should be dissolved when it is made to appear that, since the commencement of the action, the right to such injunction has been determined adversely to the plaintiff by the Supreme Court in an action instituted in another county, involving, inter alia, the same subject-matter.
Appeal and Error: 4 C.J., § 2572, p. 675, n. 58.
Appeal from Marshall District Court. — B.F. CUMMINGS, Judge.
This is an action by the plaintiffs for a temporary injunction against the defendant, to restrain it, first, from lapsing membership certificates due to the nonpayment of any assessment or assessments greater in amount than those levied in a corresponding period during the year 1926, and second, from making use of or transferring funds, save the contingent fund, for the payment of expenses, or in any manner using the guaranty, surplus, benefit, or any other funds whatever for the payment of anything but death losses of the assessment certificate holders and members. The temporary injunction issued without notice, and a motion thereafter was made by the defendant to dissolve it. Upon the district court's refusal so to do, the defendant appealed. — Reversed.
C.S. Bradshaw, W.S. Ayres, and R.B. Alberson, for appellant.
C.H.E. Boardman and Ray P. Scott, for appellees.
A prior suit was instituted in the Polk County district court, wherein Joseph Wall et al. were plaintiffs and the said Bankers Life Company, appellant, was defendant. There were involved in that litigation, first, the contractual rights of the certificate holders in the appellant, Bankers Life Company, and second, extensive redress claimed for the alleged violation of those rights. That previous proceeding was similar to the original action, afterwards brought and now pending, in the Marshall County district court. To that subsequent action in the latter court this injunction proceeding is auxiliary. After a trial on the merits, the Polk County district court decided the Wall case, above named, in favor of the Bankers Life Company. An appeal from that decision was taken by the plaintiffs in the Wall case to this court, whereupon the judgment of the Polk County district court was affirmed. Wall v. Bankers Life Co., 208 Iowa 1053.
Equity demands that the preliminary injunction be dissolved in the Marshall County district court. Accordingly, it is so ordered. By thus doing, we do not suggest or determine that the Polk County action was a class suit, nor do we indicate or decide that the first proceeding is decisive of all the points in the Marshalltown case.
Wherefore, the judgment and decree of the Marshall County district court is reversed. — Reversed.