Court Opinion

ID: 9883056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 01:36:05.612296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:20.856103
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice HaelaN,
dissenting.
I concur in the views expressed by the Chief Justice, and unite with him in dissenting from the opinion and judgment of the court.
The proceedings Inaugurated by the defendants, against Parsons are certainly not of a criminal nature; nor are they embraced by the provision of the statute which declares that “the writ of injunction shall not be granted by any court *224of the United States to stay proceedings in any court of a State, except in cases where such injunction may be authorized by any law relating to proceedings in bankruptcy.” Bev. Stat. § 720.
The act of March 3, 1887, declares that the Circuit Courts of the United States shall have, original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several States, of all spits of a civil nature, at common law or in equity, arising under the Constitution of the United States.
Parsons’ suit is, confessedly, of a civil nature; and it proceeds upon the ground that what the defendants propose to do will violate rights secured to him by the Constitution of the United States. It is, therefore, a suit arising under the Constitution of the United States. Whether the Circuit Court, sitting in equity, could properly grant to the plaintiff the relief asked is not a question of jurisdiction within the rule that orders, judgments, or decrees are void, where the court, which passed them, was without jurisdiction. It is rather a question as to the exercise of jurisdiction. As this suit is one arising under the Constitution of the United States, and is of a civil nature, the inquiry in the mind of the Circuit Judge, when he read the bill, was whether, according to the principles of equity, a decree could be properly rendered against the defendants ? Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 858.
The statute provides that “ suits in' equity shall not be sustained in either of the courts of the United States in any case where a plain, adequate, and complete remedy may be. had at law.” But if one of those courts should render a final decree, in behalf of the plaintiff, notwithstanding he had a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law, would the decree be a nullity ? Could it be assailed, collaterally, as void, upon the ground that no case was made justifying relief in equity? When a party has disregarded a preliminary injunction issued by a Circuit Court of the United States, has been fined for contempt, and is in custody for failing to pay the fine, must he be discharged upon habeas corpus in every case where it appears, upon the face of the bill, that the plaintiff has a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law ? Those questions, it *225seems to me, should receive a negative answer. ■ I do not understand the court to decide that the Circuit Court could not, under any circumstances, or by any mode of proceeding, enforce the rights which the plaintiffs contend are about to be violated by the defendants; but only, that the court .below, sitting, in equity, had no authority to interfere with the proposed action of the defendants. It seems to me that this question would properly arise upon -appeal from any final decree rendered in the cause, and is . not determinable upon writ of habeas corpus.
Upon the delivery of the opinions in this case, Mr. Attorney General stated to the court, in open court, that he would take notice óf the order awarding the writ, and that he would order the discharge of the prisoners, without requiring the issue of the writ.