Case ID: scl_13/html/0029-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Johnson\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

William McElmoyle vs. Levy Florence.
    A defendant convicted of rendering a false schedule under the prison bounds act, is excluded from all benefit under that act, and the insolvent debtors act, in any case.
    
    THE defendant was arrested on a bail writ at the suit of the plaintiff, and applied to Mr. Justice Bay, at Chambers, tp be discharged under the prpvisions of the act of assembly of 1788, usually called the prison bounds act. The plaintiff resisted this application on the ground, that the defendant was excluded from the benefit of that act, in consequence of having been previously convicted in the City Court of rendering a false schedule on an application for the benefit of this act at the suit of another plaintiff, and produced as evidence of the fact, the proceedings of the court in that case. The presiding judge was of opinion, and so decided, that he was not precluded from the benefit of the act in any case, except the particular case, in which he had been so convicted, and therefore allowed the defendant to take the benefit of his application. And a motion was now made to reverse that decision on the same ground.
    
      Dunkin, for the motion.
    
      White, contra,.
   Mr. Justice Johnson

delivered the opinion of the court:

The clause of the act, out of which this question arises is in the following words : any person who shall deliver in a false schedule of his effects, shall suffer the penalties of wilful perjury, shall be liable to be arrested again for the action or execution on which he was discharged, and forever be disabled to take any benefit from this act, and from the act for the more effectual relief of insolvent debtors,” &c. The terms are so general and comprehensive, that I cannot, by the utmost stretch of liberality, give them a construction confining the disability imposed to the particular case in which the party was convicted. It must be recollected, that the schedule is rendered on oath, and the penalties and disabilities imposed on the party who makes a false one, are doubtless intended to operate as a punishment on the offender, and furnish good reasons why the construction contended for, in opposition to the motion, ought not to prevail, even if the terms were more equivocal. The construction appears to me so palpable, that a repetition of the words of the act would constitute the best commentary. The motion is granted.

Justices Cotcock, Noil, Richardson and Gantt, concurred.