Court Opinion

ID: 6548839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-19 22:22:09.442877+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:56:03.001739
License: Public Domain

Hart, J., (dissenting). R. E. L. Eagle, the president of the bank on the 20th day of January, 1910, swore out a warrant before a justice of the peace charging J. C. Goodrum, Jr. with larceny and embezzlement. Eagle, according to the abstract of appellant, which is not challenged by appellee, testified in regard to this as follows: “He (referring to Goodrum) refused to comply with his contract, not as I understand it but refused to comply with the contract as the contract is itself. If Good-rum had carried out his contract, I would not have sworn out that affidavit unless somebody made me do it.” The plain meaning of this, even when read in connection with the testimony of Eagle as it appears in the opinion of the majority, is that there was at least an agreement between the parties that none of the bank officials would institute a prosecution against Goodrum. In short, the bank officials’ agreed that if the instruments in question were executed none of them would voluntarily prosecute Goodrum, and the papers were executed and received accordingly. Under this state of facts, we need go no further than our own decisions to ascertain the law of the case. In discussing the law applicable to a similar state of facts, Mr. Justice Hemingway, speaking for the court in the case of Shattuck v. Watson, 53 Ark. 147, said: “It is a principle that guides equity courts in their administration of justice that he who invokes their aid must come with clean hands- — that he who hath committed iniquity shall not have equity. It is the policy of the law that crime shall be prosecuted, and it prohibits under severe penalties the suppression of the prosecution. An injured party who agrees with the felon who robs him that he will not prosecute him, on condition that he return the stolen goods, or who takes a reward on such condition, violates the spirit as well as the letter of the law. The party who gives the reward and the party who receives it, on such condition, stand in pari delicto.” There the party who executed the mortgage invoked the aid of equity to cancel it, and the relief was denied; but the principle is the same. The law will give no aid to either of them, but leave them where they have placed themselves. Therefore I think the chancellor erred, and should have dismissed the complaint against Mrs. Goodrum for want of equity. Wood, J., concurs.