Cite as: 516 U. S. 349 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
217, 221-225 (1884) (mandamus to compel public officials in their official capacity to levy tax to enforce judgment against township); Krippendorf v. Hyde, 110 U. S. 276, 282-285 (1884) (prejudgment dispute over attached property); Riggs, supra, at 187-188 (mandamus to compel public officials in their official capacity to levy tax to enforce judgment against county).6
Our recognition of these supplementary proceedings has not, however, extended beyond attempts to execute, or to guarantee eventual executability of, a federal judgment. We have never authorized the exercise of ancillary jurisdiction in a subsequent lawsuit to impose an obligation to pay an existing federal judgment on a person not already liable for that judgment. Indeed, we rejected an attempt to do so in H. C. Cook Co. v. Beecher, 217 U. S. 497 (1910). In Beecher, the plaintiff obtained a judgment in federal court against a corporation that had infringed its patent. When the plaintiff could not collect on the judgment, it sued the individual directors of the defendant corporation, alleging that, during the pendency of the original suit, they had au-6 The United States, as amicus curiae for Thomas, suggests that the proceeding below was jurisdictionally indistinguishable from Swift & Co. Packers v. Compania Colombiana Del Caribe, S. A., 339 U. S. 684 (1950), Dewey v. West Fairmont Gas Coal Co., 123 U. S. 329 (1887), Labette County Comm'rs v. United States ex rel. Moulton, 112 U. S. 217 (1884), and Riggs v. Johnson County, 6 Wall. 166 (1868), because it was intended merely as a supplemental bill to preserve and force payment of the ERISA judgment by voiding fraudulent transfers of Tru-Tech's assets. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 9-18. We decline to address this argument, because, even if Thomas could have sought to force payment by mandamus or to void postjudgment transfers, neither Thomas nor the courts below characterized this suit that way. Indeed, Thomas expressly rejects that characterization of his lawsuit. Brief for Respondent 4 ("This action . . . is not one to collect a judgment, but one to establish liability on the part of the Petitioner") (emphasis in original); see id., at 11. In any event, the United States agrees that the alleged fraudulent transfers totaled no more than $80,000, far less than the judgment actually imposed on Peacock. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 3.
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