54 Kan. 244 | Kan. | 1894
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This is an appeal in a contempt proceeding, wherein Otto Miller was adjudged guilty of violating an in
On September 1, 1893, Peck filed an affidavit charging that Otto Miller, as manager of the railroad company, had violated the order of injunction by running the trains of the company over the Peck land on the 9th and 10th days of August, 1893, in contempt of the order of injunction. An attachment for contempt was issued, under which Miller was arrested, and a hearing was had before the district court on October 6, 1893, when he was found guilty of contempt, and adjudged to pay a fine of $25. It was then made to appear that Otto Miller had been appointed receiver of all the property of the railroad company by the circuit court of the United States for the district of Kansas, and was in the possession and management of the property at the times that he was charged with operating the road across Peck’s land in disregard of the injunction. The action in the federal court
It is important to all concerned that the property should be preserved intact, and the public are especially interested in its continuous operation. The enforcement of the order would operate to cut out a section in the middle of the line, break connection, and make the continuous operation of the road an impossibility. It would, in effect, wrest the possession of a part of the property from the court which had first
The action pending in the federal court related to the entire property of the railroad company; that in the state court, only to a portion of that property. The parties to the cases were not identical. At the time the injunction was granted by the district court, the federal court had not taken the property of the railroad company into its custody. The order of the district court, at the time it was made, was not necessarily an interference with the jurisdiction of the United States court. If the property which the railroad company was enjoined from using had been detached, or at the end of its line, or so situated that an interruption of its use by the railroad company would not seriously interfere with the use and enjoyment of the balance of the property, the case would be similar to that of Safford v. The People, 85 Ill. 558, and the district court might properly enforce its order against a receiver subsequently appointed. In this case, however, the enforcement of the injunction would seriously interfere with the management and operation of the entire property of the company. Conflicts in the jurisdiction of different courts must of necessity be settled on broad and liberal principles of comity. It would be exceedingly narrow for a state court to insist, in effect, on controlling the operations of an entire line of road, merely to enforce the rights of a plaintiff who claimed to own a small portion of the land on which the road bed was constructed. The court failed to recognize the principles which should have governed its action in adjudging the appellant guilty of contempt.