The question presented by the present case is not a new one in this court. It has been decided in numerous cases, founded on the refusal to pay corporation bonds, that the appropriate proceeding was to sue at law and by a judgment of the court establish the validity of the claim and the amount due, and by the return of an ordinary execution ascertain that no property of the corporation could be found liable to such execution and sufficient to satisfy the judgment. Then, if the corporation had authority to levy and collect taxes for the payment of that debt, a mandamus would issue to compel them to raise by taxation the amount necessary to satisfy the debt.
Unless, then, there is some difficulty or obstruction in the way of this common-law remedy, chancery can have no jurisdiction.
It is said that by reason of the resignation of the levee commissioners on suit can be sustained against them so as to procure a judgment on which the mandamus may ultimately issue.
But the present suit is brought against these very men in their official character, and no difference can be seen in their capacity to be sued in a court of law and a court of equity. The same service of process is required in each. The same officers serve the process, and the jurisdiction of the court over the person is governed by precisely the same principles in each case. The court of chancery possesses no extraordinary powers to compel persons to submit to its jurisdiction and litigate before it, not possessed by a common-law court, when the latter is competent to give relief.
This proposition was directly in issue and distinctly settled in the case of Rees v. City of Watertown, at the present term. In that case the plaintiff had obtained judgment, issued execution, which was returned nulla bona, and had then procured a writ of mandamus, ordering the aldermen of the city to levy the tax. The aldermen resigned before the writ could be served, with intent to evade its effect. After other aldermen were elected, a new writ was served on them, and they in turn resigned, after an order to show cause why they should not be punished for a contempt in failing to obey the writ of mandamus. Notwithstanding all this, we held that chancery had no jurisdiction, by a direct proceeding, to levy the tax or to seize the property of the citizens and sell it for the satisfaction of the judgment.
That case was much stronger than the one before us, and is unquestionably decisive of this. It is very clearly shown that the total failure of ordinary remedies does not confer upon the court of chancery an unlimited power to give relief. Such relief as is consistent with the general law of the land, and authorized by the principles and practices of the courts of equity, will, under such circumstances, be administered. But the harship of the case, and the failure of the mode of procedure established by law, is not sufficient to justify a court of equity to depart from all precedent and assume an unregulated power of administering abstract justice at the expense of well-settled principles.
It is attempted in argument to support this exercise of authority by reference to some of the acknowledged grounds of equity jurisdiction. One of these is the doctrine of specific performance of contracts. But while equity has, in some cases, enforced in this manner a contract to deliver specific stocks, there is no such case here. The plaintiffs have their bonds or stocks. It is the money due on them which they want now. And in this respect the case is one of compensation in damages for a failure to pay the money due on the bond. All that plaintiffs can get is this money and interest, and that is precisely what a court of law would give them. The almost universal rule on the subject of specific performance, as regards contracts other than those for real estate is, that where adequate compensation can be made by the damages recoverable at law, equity will not interfere.