Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/170/205/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 12:10:43+00:00

Document:
An interlocutory order of a circuit court for the issue of a temporary injunction, having been taken on appeal to the circuit court of appeals, was there affirmed, and an order was issued for temporary injunction. An appeal from this was taken to this Court. Held, that this Court has no jurisdiction, and that the appeal must be dismissed.
was about to commence such survey -- all which orders were charged to be void, and it was prayed that defendant Kirwan be enjoined from entering into any contract for the survey of the lands described or from surveying the same, and that the boundaries of the lands be defined by decree and established, and complainants be protected in the use and enjoyment of such lands, extending to and including the shores of Cedar Island Lake, and to the center of said lake, and that defendant Kirwan and his successors be perpetually enjoined from surveying the same, etc. Affidavits and exhibits were filed in support of the bill. A rule to show cause was issued and argument had on application for a temporary injunction, and the matter taken under advisement; whereupon defendants, January 11, 1897, filed their joint answer to the bill. The answer set up that in 1876, under authority from the Commissioner of the General Land Office, a contract was made by the then surveyor general of Minnesota with a deputy surveyor to make a survey of certain lands in the township in question; that thereafter, on certain pretended filed notes of the survey returned by the deputy surveyor, a plat of the land was made by the surveyor general and filed with the commissioner; that no survey was in fact made; that the exterior boundaries of the land only were run; that no divisions into sections or smaller subdivisions were attempted; that no streams or bodies of water were meandered; that the field notes were false and fictitious, and the plat thereon based false and incorrect.
Interior, after many hearings, complainants being represented, adjudged the former survey fraudulent, and in 1896 a resurvey of the tract was ordered; in accordance with which defendant Kirwan, as surveyor general of the United States, entered into a contract with Crosswell, a deputy surveyor, on December 10, 1896, to survey and subdivide the lands.
On January 22, 1897, complainants filed a replication.
"during the pendency of the above-entitled action or until the further order of this court from entering into any contract or perfecting a contract partially entered into for the survey of the lands hereinbefore described, or any part thereof, or from surveying the same or causing the same to be surveyed."
"that the order and decree of the said circuit court awarding a temporary injunction in this cause be, and the same is hereby, affirmed without costs to either party in this court, September 27, 1897."
From this decree appellants in that court, defendants below, prayed and were allowed an appeal to this Court, which, having been docketed, appellees now move to dismiss.
the case by this Court, where the matter in controversy exceeds one thousand dollars exclusive of costs.
But this applies only to final orders, judgments, or decrees. Young v. Grundy, 6 Cranch 51; Keystone Iron Company v. Martin, 132 U. S. 91; McLish v. Roff, 141 U. S. 661; American Construction Company v. Jacksonville Railway Company, 148 U. S. 372, 148 U. S. 378.
The order sought to be reviewed was simply an interlocutory order of the circuit court for the issue of a temporary injunction, which order was affirmed by the circuit court of appeals without direction. If we should take jurisdiction, it is this order we should revise in also reviewing that of the circuit court of appeals, and our mandate would go directly to the circuit court. Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Behlmer, 169 U. S. 644.
In Smith v. Vulcan Iron Works, 165 U. S. 518, it was held that the circuit courts of appeals, on an appeal from an interlocutory order or decree of the circuit courts granting an injunction and ordering an accounting in a patent suit, might consider and decide the case on its merits, and thereupon render or direct a final decree dismissing the bill, and this course might be pursued in other cases. Mills v. Green, 159 U. S. 651. Here, however, the court of appeals did not finally determine the case by its judgment, and whether the temporary injunction should be made permanent or not was left to the circuit court to decide when the final decree was entered.
"In view of these considerations, we are not satisfied that an error was committed in awarding a temporary injunction. It cannot be said, we think, that the injunction was improvidently issued, and the order appealed from is therefore affirmed."
is given to the courts of appeals from appeals from interlocutory orders in injunction proceedings, and it was under that section that the appeal was taken to the court of appeals in this case.
But there is no provision in the Act of March 3, 1891, or any other act, authorizing an appeal to this Court from interlocutory orders or decrees, and whether certiorari would lie is a question that does not arise. In re Tampa Suburban Railroad Company, 168 U. S. 583.

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