Re Merchants Stock Grain Company

• Decision Date: 04 March 1912
• Docket Number: O,No. 10,10
• Citation: 32 S.Ct. 339,56 L.Ed. 584,223 U.S. 639
• Parties: RE MERCHANTS' STOCK & GRAIN COMPANY et al., Petitioners. riginal
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

223 U.S. 639

32 S.Ct. 339

56 L.Ed. 584

RE MERCHANTS' STOCK & GRAIN COMPANY et al., Petitioners.

No. 10, Original.

Submitted December 11, 1911.

Decided March 4, 1912.

Messrs Chester H. Krum and Henry S. Priest for petitioners.

Mr. Henry S. Robbins for respondents.

Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the opinion of the court:

This is a petition for a writ of mandamus commanding the circuit court of appeals for the eighth circuit to reinstate and take jurisdiction of a writ of error dismissed by it. The facts are these: During the pendency, in a circuit court of the United States, of a suit in equity to which the petitioners were parties defendant, they were charged by the complainant with having wilfully violated an interlocutory injunction theretofore granted in the suit at the instance and for the benefit of the complainant, and at the hearing upon that complaint were by the court adjudged guilty of contempt of its authority, and ordered unconditionally to pay into its registry, within five days, fines of $1,000, $2,000, and $500, respectively, each fine, when paid, to go three fourths to the complainant, 'as compensation in part for the expenses incurred in prosecuting these contempt proceedings,' and one fourth to the United States. With the purpose of securing a review of the order, the petitioners sued out a writ of error from the circuit court of appeals, and when the writ came on for hearing, that court dismissed it, upon the ground that the order, rightly considered, was remedial, not punitive, and was merely interlocutory, and reviewable only upon an appeal from the final decree. 109 C. C. A. 230, 187 Fed. 398.

We are not now concerned with whether the proceedings resulting in the order were such as to admit of the imposition of punitive, as distinguished from compensatory, fines, or whether, if the proceedings were not of that character, the order was erroneous in its entirety, or only as to so much of the fines as was to go to the United States; and therefore we pass what is said in that connection in the briefs and come at once to the only question presented for decision; which is, whether the order was open to review upon a writ of error. The answer turns upon the character of the order. If it was remedial, it was merely interlocutory, and reviewable only upon an appeal from the final decree; but, if it was punitive, it was a final judgment, criminal in its nature, and reviewable upon a writ of error, without awaiting the final decree. Such an order against an offending suitor is deemed remedial when its purpose is to indemnify the injured suitor, or coercively to secure obedience to a mandate in his behalf, and is deemed punitive when its purpose is to vindicate the authority of the court by punishing the act of disobedience as a public...