Brown v. City of Birmingham

• Decision Date: 10 May 1904
• Citation: 140 Ala. 590,37 So. 173
• Parties: BROWN v. MAYOR, ETC., OF CITY OF BIRMINGHAM.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

37 So. 173

140 Ala. 590

BROWN v. MAYOR, ETC., OF CITY OF BIRMINGHAM.

Supreme Court of Alabama

May 10, 1904

Appeal from Chancery Court, Jefferson County; John C. Carmichael Chancellor.

Bill for an injunction by E. F. Brown against the mayor and aldermen of Birmingham. From a decree dismissing the bill for want of equity, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Powell & Blackburn and Phares Coleman, for appellant.

E. D Smith and John C. Forner, for appellee.

McCLELLAN C.J.

Brown is complainant in, and the mayor and aldermen of the city of Birmingham are the respondents to, this bill. Its object and prayer is to enjoin the city authorities from enforcing or attempting to enforce by quasi criminal prosecutions a certain ordinance of the municipality, which the bill alleged to be wholly void. On the exhibition of the bill to the judge of the Tenth Circuit, its prayer for a preliminary injunction was granted, and the writ issued accordingly. Thereupon the respondent filed its answer, and moved the dissolution of the preliminary injunction on the denials of the answer, and also for the want of equity in the bill. The chancellor granted the motion on the latter ground, holding that the bill was without equity. From that decretal order this appeal is prosecuted.

We discover nothing in the case made by the bill to take it out of the well-settled general doctrine that the jurisdiction of courts of equity is purely and exclusively civil; that, of consequence, they are without power to enjoin the commission of threatened crimes, on the one hand, and to enjoin threatened prosecutions for the commission of alleged crimes on the other; that violations of state laws and violations of penal municipal ordinances, and prosecutions for both, stand upon the same footing, in this connection; and that it is wholly immaterial that the statute or ordinance for an alleged violation of which prosecution is threatened is absolutely void. Pike County Dispensary v Brundidge, 130 Ala. 193, 30 So. 451; Burnett v. Craig, 30 Ala. 135, 68 Am. Dec. 115; Moses & Beebe v. Mobile, 52 Ala. 198; Arbuckle v. Blackburn,

113 F. 616, 51 C. C. A. 122; Denver v. Beede (Colo. Sup.) 54 P. 624; Paulk v. Sycamore (Ga.) 30 S.E. 417, 41 L. R. A. 772, 69 Am. St. Rep. 128; 16 Am. & Eng. Ency. Law, pp. 370-372.

The averment of this bill that the threatened prosecutions, if allowed to proceed, will inflict irreparable damages upon the complainant, is beside the mark. If the quasi criminal ordinance for violations of which the prosecutions are about to be instituted is a valid ordinance, the ascription of damages, however irreparable, is, of course, not to the prosecutions in any legal sense, but to the complainant's own voluntary and unlawful acts. Criminals have no standing anywhere to complain of detriment to their persons, business or estates, resulting directly or indirectly from their prosecution and conviction. On the other hand, if the ordinance in question is invalid, it is to be assumed that it will be so determined by the court of first instance on the trial of the first prosecution under it, and no more injury be inflicted upon the complainant than is necessarily incident to all prosecutions of alleged offenders who are found to be not guilty; and, so far as damages are concerned, there would be the same want of equity in such bill as in one to enjoin the prosecution of an innocent man for the alleged violation of a confessedly valid statute. Criminal and quasi criminal causes cannot, in our system of jurisprudence, be tried and determined upon such bills, any more where the party proceeded against is innocent, for that no statute or law denounces his act as a crime, than where he in fact has not committed the criminal act charged, or, indeed, where he has in fact committed the criminal act denounced. If he is guilty, the criminal courts will punish him, and it may be to his utter undoing in person and estate. If he is not guilty of any offense, either because the act charged is not an offense, or because he has not committed the act, those tribunals will acquit him, and there is an end of it. In either case, whatever damages he in fact sustains from the prosecution are those only to which all citizens must submit in the first instance, looking to the courts of common law for compensation for the malicious wrongs of the prosecutors.

Not only is it true, in a legal sense, that no damages irreparable or otherwise, result to a defendant from a bona fide prosecution for an alleged crime, but it is also legally true that if he be innocent, either for that the act charged is not an offense, or for that he did not commit the act, his remedy at law is plain, adequate, and complete, by way of establishing and having his innocence adjudged in the criminal court before which he is tried; and for this...