Court Opinion

ID: 9828832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:46:32.332148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:53.591047
License: Public Domain

On Appellees’ Motion for Rehearing.
This court does consider important, it deems decisive, the allegations of the petition, which for present purposes must be taken as true, that appellees knew appellants were innocent of the offenses with which they were being charged, and for which they were being arrested and placed in jail, by appellees. If true, then as stated in our former opinion, appellees will, under color of their office as law enforcers, become law breakers, and, unless restrained by an injunction, do irreparable injury to appellants’ property rights — a property right of the character that a court of equity will protect from threatened irreparable injury.
The cases relied on by appellees as supporting their position, in our opinion, do not do so. It is true that when a law enforcement officer, acting in good faith— or even if it is doubtful that he is acting in good faith — arrests a citizen for an offense denounced by a valid statute or ordinance, such citizen, though innocent, must digest his injuries as best he may. But where a police officer acts in bad faith, and in defiance of his duty as such, molests the citizen in the enjoyment of a property right his obligation binds him to protect, and this is all admitted to be true, a court of equity will enjoin such officer with no more regard to his office than the officer himself shows. Certainly, a court of equity has no less power, to restrain an officer who in bad faith arrests a citizen for an offense he knows him innocent of, than *331it has to restrain an officer who in good faith arrests a man for doing, an act denounced by a void statute or ordinance.
Motion refused.