Case Name: The Commonwealth against La Fitte and others
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1815-12-22
Citations: 2 Serg. & Rawle 106
Docket Number: 
Parties: The Commonwealth against La Fitte and others.
Judges: 
Reporter: Reports of cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Sergeant & Rawle)
Volume: 2
Pages: 106–107

Head Matter:
The Commonwealth against La Fitte and others.
The Court will not upon exceptions filed, inquire into an award of arbitrators, under the act of20th March, 1810, unless the arbitrators have misbehaved in the execution of their duty.
ACTION of debt in the name of the Commonwealth, on an administration bond, against Anthony La Fitte, administrator of Peter La Fitte, and Aimé Brandt and Anthony Terradell, his sureties. It was submitted to arbitrators agreeably to the act of 20th March, 1810, who on the 21st July, 1815, awarded against the defendants 6000 dollars, the penalty of the bond. On the 9th of the following August, they filed several exceptions to the award, which the decision of the Court renders it unnecessary to state.
S. Ewing, for the plaintiff,
now moved to dismiss the exceptions, alleging, that in a case of this kind the only remedy was an appeal.
Ray, contra.
Purdon’s Digest, 12.

Opinion:
By the Court.
The exceptions must be dismissed. The case amounts to this. The defendants complain, that the arbitrators erred in point of law, in rejecting his evidence. But supposing it to be so, the remedy is not by filing exceptions ; but by appeal. The act of assembly gives the arbitrators the power of deciding on the competency of evidence, as well as its credibility, and to determine all questions in the cause, as well of law as of fact. And the award, when filed in the office of the prothonotary, is to be considered as a judgment until reversed. The defendant, therefore, has mistaken his remedy. If the arbitrators had misbehaved in the execution of their duty, it would have been a different case. This £omt might then have inquired into their conduct to prevent a failure of justice, for such misbehaviour could in no other way have been inquired" of. But nothing of that kind is alleged.
Exceptions dismissed.