First National Trust & Savings Bank v. Superior Court

The petitioner seeks the writ of prohibition to restrain the respondent superior court from exercising jurisdiction in a pending action until it has ordered the presence of parties claimed to be indispensable to a complete determination of the controversy. (See section 389, Code of Civil Procedure.) This court issued the alternative writ. The matter is submitted on the petition and the respondent’s demurrer and answer.

The pleadings herein show that on March 15, 1941, Sallyneil B. Wilson commenced an action in the Superior Court in Los Angeles County naming The First National Trust and Savings Bank of San Diego, petitioner herein, as the sole defendant. The plaintiff in that action sought to recover from the defendant, trustee of an express trust, one-half of the income from the trust estate under an amendment to the declaration of trust whereby the plaintiff was made a beneficiary of the trust. The following are the facts alleged in the complaint in that action :

On August 16, 1929, Edith W. Grose executed a declaration of trust covering real and personal property, naming The First National Trust and Savings Bank of San Diego as trustee to collect the income therefrom and pay…

Dissenting. — I dissent. The majority opinion in the present ease concludes that this court should not issue its writ of prohibition to halt the proceedings in the court below, despite the fact that the court has exceeded its jurisdiction by proceeding in the absence of an indispensable party and although further action remains to be taken by the trial court.

Stated in simplest terms, the facts are that Edith W. Grose and F. Guthrie Wilson, as the surviving issue of Juliet Guthrie Wilson, were entitled upon her death to share equally in the income from certain trust property. When F. Guthrie Wilson died in 1940, Edith W. Grose would have been entitled to the entire current income under the terms of the original trust instrument. The plaintiff, Sallyneil B. Wilson, who is the surviving wife of F. Guthrie Wilson, claims that she is entitled to receive her husband’s share of the income under the terms of an amendment to the trust instrument executed in 1933. A further amendment of the trust instrument in 1935 purported, under certain conditions stated therein, to grant the plaintiff two-thirds of the share to which F. Guthrie Wilson was entitled during his lifetime. The defendant…