Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/194/324
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 02:09:06+00:00

Document:
Argued: and submitted April 7, 8, 1904.
'First. Whether the circuit court of appeals has jurisdiction to review an order or judgment of the circuit court of the United States, finding a person guilty of contempt for violation of an order of that court, and imposing a fine for the contempt.
'Second. Whether the 'Act to Establish Circuit Courts of Appeals, and to Define and Regulate in Certain Cases Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States, and for Other Purposes,' approved March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. at L. 826, chap. 517, U. S. Comn. Stat. 1901, p. 547), authorizes a review by a circuit court of appeals of a judgment or order of a circuit court of the United States, finding a person, not a party to the suit, guilty of contempt for violation of an order of that court, made in such suit, and imposing a fine for such contempt.
'Third. Whether, if such review be sanctioned by law, a person so adjudged in contempt, and fined therefor, who is not a party to the suit, can bring the matter to the circuit court of appeals by appeal.
Mr. William Velpeau Rooker for Bessette.
Messrs. Jacob Newman, Salmon O. Levinson, and Benjamin V. Becker for W. B. Conkey Co.
The primary question is whether the circuit court of appeals can review an order of a district or circuit court in contempt proceedings. A secondary question is, How, if there be a right of review, can it be exercised?
A contempt proceeding is sui generis. It is criminal in its nature, in that the party is charged with doing something forbidden, and, if found guilty, is punished. Yet it may be resorted to in civil as well as criminal actions, and also independently of any civil or criminal action.
'Proceedings for contempts are of two classes,those prosecuted to preserve the power, and vindicate the dignity, of the courts, and to punish for disobedience of their orders, and those instituted to preserve and enforce the rights of private parties to suits, and to compel obedience to orders and decrees made to enforce the rights and administer the remedies to which the court has found them to be entitled. The former are criminal and punitive in their nature, and the government, the courts, and the people are interested in their prosecution. The latter are civil, remedial, and coercive in their nature, and the parties chiefly in interest in their conduct and prosecution are the individuals whose private rights and remedies they were instituted to protect or enforce. Thompson v. Pennsylvania R. Co. 48 N. J. Eq. 105, 108, 21 Atl. 182; Hendryx v. Fitzpatrick, 19 Fed. 810; Ex parte Culliford, 8 Barn. & C. 220; Rex v. Edwards, 9 Barn. & C. 652; People ex rel. Munsell v. Oyer & Terminer Ct. 101 N. Y. 245, 247, 54 Am. Rep. 691, 4 N. E. 259; Phillips v. Welch, 11 Nev. 187, 190; State v. Knight, 3 S. D. 509, 513, 44 Am. St. Rep. 809, 54 N. W. 412; People ex rel. Gaynor v. McKane, 78 Hun, 154, 160, 28 N. Y. Supp. 981; 4 Bl. Com. 285, 7 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, p. 68. A criminal contempt involves no element of personal injury. It is directed against the power and dignity of the court, and private parties have little, if any, interest in the proceedings for its punishment. But if the contempt consists in the refusal of a party or a person to do an act which the court has ordered him to do for the benefit or the advantage of a party to a suit or action pending before it, and he is committed until he complies with the order, the commitment is in the nature of an execution to enforce the judgment of the court, and the party in whose favor that judgment was rendered is the real party in interest in the proceedings.' See also Rapalje, Contempts, § 21.
Doubtless the distinction referred to in this quotation is the cause of the difference in the rulings of various state courts as to the right of review. Manifestly, if one inside of a court room disturds the order of proceedings, or is guilty of personal misconduct in the presence of the court, such action may properly be regarded as a contempt of court; yet it is not misconduct in which any individual suitor is specially interested. It is more like an ordinary crime which affects the public at large, and the criminal nature of the act is the dominant feature. On the other hand, if, in the progress of a suit, a party is ordered by the court to abstain from some action which is injurious to the rights of the adverse party, and he disobeys that order, he may also be guilty of contempt, but the personal injury to the party in whose favor the court has made the order gives a remedial character to the contempt proceeding. The punishment is to secure to the adverse party the right which the court has awarded to him. He is the one primarily interested, and if it should turn out, on appeal from the final decree in the case, that the original order was erroneous, there would, in most cases, be great propriety in setting aside the punishment which was imposed for disobeying an order to which the adverse party was not entitled.
It may not be always easy to classify a particular act as belonging to either one of these two classes. It may partake of the characteristics of both. A significant and generally determinative feature is that the act is by one party to a suit in disobedience of a special order made in behalf of the other. Yet sometimes the disobedience may be of such a character and in such a manner as to indicate a contempt of the court rather than a disregard of the rights of the adverse party.
In the case at bar the controversy between the parties to the suit was settled by final decree, and from that decree, so far as appears, no appeal was taken. An appeal from it would not have brought up the proceeding against the petitioner, for he was not a party to the suit. Yet, being no party to the suit he was found guilty of an act in resistance of the order of the court. His case, therefore, comes more fully within the punitive than the remedial class. It should be regarded like misconduct in a court room or disobedience of a subpoena, as among those acts primarily directed against the power of the court, and in that view of the case we pass to a consideration of the questions presented.
Without stopping to notice the decisions of the courts of the several states, whose decisions are more or less influenced by the statutes of those states, we turn to an examination of the rulings of this court in respect to the finality of contempt proceedings.
'If the order complained of is to be treated as part of what was done in the original suit, it cannot be brought here for review by writ of error. Errors in equity suits can only be corrected in this court on appeal, and that after a final decree. This order, if part of the proceedings in the suit, was interlocutory only.
'There can be no doubt of the proposition that the exercise of the power of punishment for contempt of their orders by courts of general jurisdiction is not subject to review by writ of error or appeal to this court. Nor is there in the system of Federal jurisprudence any relief against such orders, when the court has authority to make them, except through the court making the order, or, possibly, by the exercise of the pardoning power.
In Re Watts, 190 U. S. 1, 47 L. ed. 933, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 718, the petitioners having been found guilty of a contempt of court by the district court of Indiana, applied for a writ of habeas corpus. We issued with that writ a certiorari, and brought the entire record to this court, and, upon the evidence, discharged the petitioners.
From these decisions it is apparent that the uniform ruling of this court has been against the right to review the decisions of the lower court in contempt proceedings by writ of error or by appeal, except in cases of purely remedial and interlocutory orders. Yet we have issued certioraries in aid of habeas corpus proceedings and applications for prohibition, by which the facts in the contempt case have been brought before us, and then we have passed upon the merits of the decision in the lower court.
The thought underlying the denial by this court of the right of review by writ of error or appeal has not been that there was something in contempt proceedings which rendered them not properly open to review, but that they were of a criminal nature, and no provision had been made for a review of criminal cases. This was true in England as here. In that country, as is well known, there was no review of criminal cases by appeal or writ of error. Neither was there in our Federal system prior to the act of February 6, 1889 (25 Stat. at L. 656, chap. 113), which provided for a writ of error from this court in capital cases. While the act creating the court of appeals, March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. at L. 826, chap. 517, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 547), authorized a review of criminal cases, yet it limited the jurisdiction of this court to cases of a conviction for a capital or otherwise infamous crimesince limited to capital cases (29 Stat. at L. 492, chap. 68, pp. 549, 556), and gave the right of review of all other criminal cases to the circuit courts of appeal; and, of course, a proceeding in contempt cannot be considered as an infamous crime. Habeas corpus is not treated as a writ of error, and while it may be issued by one court to inquire into the action of a court of co-ordinate jurisdiction, yet the inquiry is only whether the action of the court in imposing punishment was within its jurisdiction. Even in an appellate court, the writ of habeas corpus is not of itself the equivalent of a writ of error, although, when supplemented by certiorari, as shown in the case of Re Watts, 190 U. S. 1, 47 L. ed. 933, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 718, it may bring the whole case before the appellate court for review.
As, therefore, the ground upon which a review by this court of a final decision in contempt cases was denied no longer exists, the decisions themselves cease to have controlling authority, and whether the circuit courts of appeals have authority to review proceedings in contempt in the district and circuit courts depends upon the question whether such proceedings are criminal cases. That they are criminal in their nature has been constantly affirmed.
But the mode of trial does not change the nature of the proceeding, or take away the finality of the decision. So when, by § 6 of the courts of appeals act, the circuit courts of appeals are given jurisdiction to review the 'final decision in the district court and the existing circuit courts in all cases other than those provided for in the preceding section of this act, unless otherwise provided by law,' and the preceding section gives to this court jurisdiction to review convictions in only capital or otherwise infamous crimes, and no other provision is found in the statutes for a review of the final order in contempt cases, upon what satisfactory ground can it be held that the final decisions in contempt cases in the circuit or district courts are not subject to review by the circuit courts of appeals? Considering only such cases of contempt as the presentthat is, cases in which the proceedings are against one not a party to the suit, and cannot be regarded as interlocutorywe are of opinion that there is a right of review in the circuit court of appeals. Such review must, according to the settled law of this court, be by writ of error. Walker v. Dreville, 12 Wall. 440, 20 L. ed. 429; Deland v. Platte County, 155 U. S. 221, 39 L. ed. 128, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 82; Bucklin v. United States, 159 U. S. 680, 40 L. ed. 304, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 182. On such a writ only matters of law are considered. The decision of the trial tribunal, court or jury, deciding the facts, is conclusive as to them.
We, therefore, answer the questions in this way: The second and fourth in the affirmative, the third in the negative. It is unnecessary to answer the first.
Cecil HICKS, District Attorney for County of Orange, California, Acting on Behalf of Alta Sue FEIOCK, Petitioner, v. Phillip William FEIOCK.
The NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY and Myron Farber v. Mario E. JASCALEVICH. No. A-111.
WALTER B. GRANT and E. E. Burlingame, Appts. and Plffs. in Err., v. UNITED STATES.
GILLIS v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA.
SAMUEL GOMPERS, John Mitchell, and Frank Morrison, Plffs. in Err., Appts., and Petitioners, v. UNITED STATES.
WILLIAM J. DOYLE, and James G. Doak, Trading as Doyle & Doak, v. LONDON GUARANTEE & ACCIDENT COMPANY, LIMITED.
PENFIELD CO. OF CALIFORNIA et al. v. SECURITIES & EXCHANGE COMMISSION.
MICHAELSON et al. v. UNITED STATES ex rel. CHICAGO, ST. P., M. & O. RY. CO. SANDEFUR v. CANOE CREEK COAL CO.

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