Case ID: bradf_1/html/0016-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "BY THE COURT.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

LESTER WALLIS, plf. in error, versus WILLIAM SPARKS.
    Writ of error will only lie where there has been a final judgment in the Court, below.
    Dec. 1839.
    In this case the verdict was for the Defendant in errror in the court below, and judgment thereon was never rendered, having been arrested, on the motion of plaintiff in error. In this stage of the proceedings the plaintiff Wallis, brings his writ of error to the Supreme Court. And now the defendant moves to dismiss the case from the docket, on the ground that a writ of error does not lie till after final judgment.
   BY THE COURT.

The motion in this case must be sustained. Strictly speaking perhaps the motion should have been to quash the writ of error, but the difference is not very material.

Writs of error will only lie where there has been a final judgment in the Court below. This in general only embraces those decisions and determinations of the Court which would be a bar to another action for the same cause. The arrest of judgment is in no case such a bar. The parties must wait till there, is a final judgment of some kind, when the whole proceedings below may be brought before the appellate Court by a writ of error.

The plaintiff in this case might have moved for judgment against himself in the District Court, which would have been ordered as a matter of course, (Fish versus Featherwax, 2 Johnson’s cases, 215, and Horne vs. Barney, 19 Johnson’s Reports, 247), or he might have retraced his steps and accommo-modated his proceedings, to suit the views of the Court until he had obtained final judgment. After which, in either case, if he had felt himself aggrieved, he might have brought the whole matter here for review.