While this suit was pending, the Federal Communications Commission consented to assignment of the license, and the Society transferred both the station properties and the license to the lessee. After the Society and the lessee had jointly applied to the Federal Communications Commission for consent to transfer the station license, Johnson, the respondent, a member of the Society, filed this suit to have the lease and the assignment of the license set aside for fraud. The Society leased this station for fifteen years to petitioner, Radio Station WOW, Inc., a Nebraska corporation formed to operate the station as lessee. Petitioner, Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society, a fraternal benefit association of Nebraska, owns radio station WOW. The facts relevant to the jurisdictional problem, as well as to the main issues, are these, summarized as briefly as accuracy permits. At the outset, however, our right to review the decision below is seriously challenged. to the power of a State to adjudicate conflicting claims to the property used by a licensed radio station. This case concerns the relation of the Federal Communications Act, 48 Stat. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court. 705, to review the reversal of a decree dismissing the complaint in a suit to set aside a lease and an assignment of a license of a radio station. 120 CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF NEBRASKA SyllabusĬertiorari, 323 U.S. The question of fraud adjudicated by the state court will no longer be open insofar as it bears upon the reliability as licensee of any of the parties. Although the State has not been deprived by federal legislation of the practical power to terminate a broadcasting service by a proper adjudication separating the physical property from the license, that power will be amply respected, in the instant case, if it is qualified merely to the extent of requiring the state court to withhold execution of that portion of the decree requiring retransfer of the physical properties until steps are ordered to be taken, with all deliberate speed, to enable the Communications Commission to deal with new applications in connection with the station. In a decree directing a transfer of the facilities of a federally licensed radio station, the state court exceeded its power in ordering the parties "to do all things necessary" to secure a transfer of the license, since this involved restrictions upon the licensing system which Congress has established. This Court will not review a state court decision resting on an adequate and independent nonfederal ground, even though the state court may also have summoned to its support an erroneous view of federal law. A state court decree otherwise "final" for purposes of review by this Court is nonetheless so because it orders also an accounting of profits, where such accounting cannot give rise to a federal question.
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