214 P. 751 | Idaho | 1923
— In September, 1921, Mattie L. Mathers instituted a divorce action against petitioner Alex Mathers in the district court of the fifth district, for Bannock county, and the same was placed upon the calendar of Judge Terrell of that district. Petitioner Frank H. Paradice, Jr.,
“A judgment rendered by a judge of another county, called in by a disqualified judge, is not invalid, because he signed his findings and conclusions and order for judgment at home and was not in the county of the trial when judgment was entered.” (Estudillo v. Security Loan & Trust Co., 158 Cal. 66, 109 Pac. 884.)
It is not the signing, but the filing of the findings and judgment that determines the action. If they are filed in the proper court the judgment is valid. (Estudillo v. Security Loan & Trust Co., supra; Comstock etc. Co. v. Superior Court, 57 Cal. 625; Walter v. Merced Academy
The decree in the divorce ease was rendered by Judge Edgington as a judge of the 5th judicial district. Acting as such he could exercise only the powers which could be exercised by a judge of that district. A judicial officer may punish for contempt. (C. S., see. 6504.) The court or judge may act in contempt proceedings. (C. S., secs. 7385-7392, 7396.) A district judge may sit at chambers anywhere within his district, and, when so acting, has jurisdiction and power to exercise ail powers expressly conferred upon a judge by any statute of this state as contradistinguished from the court. (C. S., sec. 6493, subd. 11.) Since a judge may act in contempt proceedings it follows that he has power tO' so act at chambers anywhere within his district. A judge of the district court for the 5th judicial district could have so acted. Judge Edgington, who took the place of one of the judges of the 5th judicial district, had no more power than the judge whose place he took. In contempt proceedings, arising . out of matters occurring in connection with the enforcement of the judgment which he had rendered as a judge of the 5th judicial district, he could act at chambers anywhere within that district, but not outside. The only court or judge that could act in contempt proceedings arising out of the enforcement of the judgment of the district court for the 5th district was that court, one of its judges, or another judge properly acting as such. Judge Edgington could not act in the contempt proceeding as the judge of the 9th district, but only as a judge of the 5th district, in which capacity he rendered the judgment in contempt of which petitioners were alleged to be. Defendants contend that the jurisdiction of a district court is state-wide; that in the exercise of this jurisdiction Judge Edgington had the power to cite petitioners to appear before him in the contempt proceedings anywhere within his own district, the 9th, and that petitioners’
Petitioner Mrs. Greene was not a party to the divorce action, and is not bound by the decree. If she sets up a claim of title or a legal right to the note in question, on the part of herself, or the Citizens National Bank, properly raising a question of property rights as between herself and the bank on the one hand and Mattie Mathers on the other, that issue cannot be heard or decided in the present contempt proceeding, and the district court or judge will have to abandon it, and leave the parties to resort to a proper remedy, either by way of an independent action or supplementary proceedings, in which their property rights can be determined. (Albrethson v. Ensign, 32 Ida. 687, 186 Pac. 911.) However, while petitioner Mrs. Greene sets up in her petition in this court that the Citizens National Bank claims a property right in the note, neither she nor the other petitioners have raised this question in the contempt proceeding. If further contempt proceedings are instituted before Judge Edgington in the district court at Pocatello, or elsewhere at chambers within the 5th judicial district, it will be incumbent upon petitioners, in order to properly raise the jurisdictional question, to set up a claim of property right in the note on behalf of the Citizens National Bank. If they properly do so the court will have to abandon such contempt proceeding.
The original return day fixed by the citation has expired. Subsequently Judge Edgington issued a citation directing defendants to appear before him in the contempt proceedings at St. Anthony in the 9th district on February
In defendants’ return reference is made to subsequent civil proceedings instituted by the Citizens National Bank against Mathers, and, in an affidavit filed by one of defendants’ counsel after the hearing, reference is had to bankruptcy proceedings against Mathers which were instituted pending the hearing in this court. Whatever may be the effect of these matters upon a final adjudication of the rights of the parties to the $9,000 note, we do not think they are material in this case.
To summarize, we conclude that the decree in the divorce ease and the order for execution are valid and defendants should not be restrained from proceeding further in the enforcement thereof. We conclude that the citation for contempt was void for want of jurisdiction. It is ordered that a permanent writ of prohibition issue out of this court prohibiting Judge Edgington from taking further action in the present contempt proceeding. No costs awarded.’