160 F. 984 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of New Jersey | 1908
By their bill the complainants pray for an injunction to restrain the defendant, who is the postmaster at Leonia, N. J., from obeying a fraud order, issued on December 5, 1906, by the Postmaster General. The order declares that it has “been made to appear to the Postmaster General upon evidence satisfactory to him” that J. Randolph Appleby, the Appleby & Wood Company, and the Asbury Company, “are engaged in conducting a scheme or device for obtaining money through the mails by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises.” The bill shows that on October 20, 1906, the complainant Appleby was charged with having engaged, under his own name and the. names of the companies above mentioned, in conducting a scheme to obtain money through the mails
In the present case, the bill of complaint fails utterly to show what facts were before the Postmaster General. There is an averment that the complainant Appleby submitted an affidavit, a copy of which is annexed to the bill, but there is no averment that other proofs were not before the Postmaster General, or that the complainants have no knowledge of the production of other proofs before him, or that, having no knowledge of what proofs were before him, they applied to him for a copy of or a statement concerning the nature of the proofs. The only averment in the bill bearing on any of these points is the following:
“And your orators further show that they were not acquainted with any facts concerning which complaint was made about them, but assumed that the complaint before the post office authorities was the same as that for which your orator J. Randolph Appleby was indicted by the September federal grand jury of the district of New Jersey concerning the transactions of the said Appleby at Beemerville, in the county of Sussex, and assuming that to be the complaint answered the same as fully as was within their power.”
There are other averments as to what the complainants understand the complaint against them was, and concerning the nature of their business, and as to their conclusions or opinions concerning the legality of that business, but, as above stated, the bill fails to disclose the case on which the Postmaster General acted. A due regard for an order of an executive department of the government demands that the judicial department shall not require the head of that executive department, or any of his subordinate officials, to answer a bill in equity,
Here, the allegations of the bill show that the complainant was charged with obtaining money through the mails by fraudulently inducing persons to buy worthless lands. The bill itself shows that the nature of the business which it was charged the complainant was carrying on was clearly within sections 3929 and 4041 of the Revised Statutes (U. S. Comp. St. 1901, pp. 2686, 2749), as amended. It was incumbent upon the complainant, therefore, to set forth in his bill the case as it existed before the Postmaster General, or, if he could not do that, to show why he could not, and to aver, in addition, all the material facts concerning the nature of his business and his method of carrying it on. Failing to do this, the bill is demurrable for want of equity.