19 F. Cas. 1073 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Southern New York | 1877
The fourth section of the act of May 15, 1S20, presenting the mode of relief against a treasury warrant of distress, authorizes the party aggrieved “to prefer a bill of complaint to any district judge of the United States,” and the judge “thereupon” to grant an injunction. It is intended that the authorization in this respect is to the judge as an individual, and not a power conferred upon the court. I think that interpretation will not satisfy all the provisions of the act. Manifestly, an act of the court is contemplated, in awarding judgment against the complainant, and the adding of damages to the amount claimed by the United States. The fifth section, in empowering the judge to issue or dissolve the injunction in or out of court, implies that other doings in relation to the matter' must necessarily be acts of the court. So the further provision in the fourth section, that “the same proceedings shall be had on such .injunction as in other cases,” except as to the answer, imports that the matter then becomes a suit in court, subject to the regulations and directions of the court. The sixth section more explicitly evinces the understanding of the legislature upon this point. After an appeal allowed, it says: “The same proceedings shall be had in the circuit court as are prescribed in the district court.” No language can more distinctly denote that congress intended the legislation for the district court, and not for the judge as a commissioner.
It is not an unusual use of language, in the statutes, to put the judge for the court, and to make provisions for him to execute which can only be executed in court. Thus the district judge may adjourn the circuit and district courts, in cases of contagious sickness. Act Sept. 24, 1789 [1 Stat. 73].
The provisions in the act authorizing the “person aggrieved” by refusing or dissolving the injunction to appeal, is supposed to deny, by implication, the right of appeal to ’ the United States. It appears to me to have a different bearing,
Further, if the act is susceptible of the construction that the power conferred on the district judge is one which he may exer-else in all respects, as a commissioner and out of court, yet it also clearly empowers him to proceed upon the matter in court, and whatever is thus done must become an act of court The statute renders the plead
The record brought up to this court exhibits all the features of a regular suit. Proofs are taken, orders are entered, commissions issued, full argument is heard, and a final decree is pronounced. By the act of March 3, 1803, an appeal from all final judgments or decrees of a district court is allowed to the circuit court; and, as this is a final decree, the case comes within the statute, unless there is something in the organization of the district court of the Northern district which prevents the application of the act to it. The act of April 9, 1S14, divided the state of New York into two districts. There would have been no ground, upon the general language of the act, to doubt that congress intended the two courts to stand, in relation to the circuit court, precisely as the single one had stood. The judge of the Southern district was directed to hold the northern court, in case of the absence or inability of the judge of the Northern district. The 3d section is, however, calculated to create some question as to the extent of the appellate jurisdiction of the circuit court; for it is provided “that writs of error shall lie from decisions therein to the circuit court,” without any mention of appeals. There is, accordingly, great force in the inference that, by the special provision for writs of error, congress intended to exclude cases of appeal, and that, under the act organizing the court of the Northern district, the decisions in admiralty and equity cases made in that court would be final. This was clearly an accidental omission in penning the act. By the act of March 3, 1823 [3 Stat. 774], appeals were given from final decrees or judgments of that court to this court. The act of May 22, 1S26 [4 Stat. 192], gives an appeal or writ of error directly to the supreme court from the decisions of that court sitting as a circuit. It accordingly follows that the district court of the Northern district is placed upon the same relation to the circuit court as that of the Southern district, and an appeal lies from it to this court to the same extent.
The question now presented appears to have been before the circuit court of the Sixth circuit and that of the District of Columbia, and directly opposing decisions have been made upon the point by those courts. The views taken by those courts of this subject are not furnished us, and as they stand in conflict, neither can be urged as an authority upon this court.
I am of opinion that the decision of the district judge is a final decree of the district court, from which an appeal lies to this court.
It is a constitutional right of the citizen to have his case at law’ or in equity reviewed by a court of error. Ringgold's Case, 1 Bland, 7, 12. A writ of error was. at common law, demand-