Matushefske v. Herlihy

Decision Date15 November 1965
Citation59 Del. 117,214 A.2d 883,9 Storey 117
Parties, 59 Del. 117 John MATUSHEFSKE, Justice of the Peace in New Castle County, Respondent-Appellant, v. Thomas HERLIHY, III, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Petitioner-Appellee.
CourtSupreme Court of Delaware

William D. Bailey, Jr., of Bayard, Brill, Russell & Handelman, Wilmington, for appellant.

David F. Anderson, of Berl, Potter & Anderson, and Peter W. Green, Wilmington, for appellee.

WOLCOTT, C. J., and CAREY, J., and MARVEL, Vice-Chancellor, sitting.

CAREY, Justice.

The Superior Court granted writs of prohibition against appellant herein, a Justice of the Peace, and the Court of Common Pleas of New Castle County, barring them from taking any further proceedings in certain criminal charges against the appellee, who was at the time Chief Deputy Attorney General, although he resigned that office prior to the decision below. A stipulation of facts was filed on the basis of which the Court held that 'nothing done by the appellee could be construed to amount to the commission of a crime'. In addition to the usual command of the writ, Mr. Matushefske was personally barred from taking any further action whatsoever in any Court of the State based upon the events described in the statement of facts. He alone has appealed.

The facts are these: In obedience to a subpoena, appellant turned over to the Grand Jury certain of his official dockets. The Grand Jury thereafter returned a true bill charging him with four counts of nonfeasance in office, two of which were for failure to keep records of certain motor vehicle offenses brought before him. Four days later, a warrant of arrest was issued based upon the indictment. Police officers first delivered back to appellant his dockets, following which they arrested him pursuant to the warrant and started to seize the dockets as an incident to the arrest. He ordered them to desist, whereupon they telephoned the appellee who instructed them to proceed with the seizure, and they did so. The dockets seized by the police were not his 'live' or current books actually in daily use, but were those for the two years preceding the period included in the current books.

Some days later, the appellant issued a warrant, based upon his own complaint, directing the arrest of appellee on a charge of contempt. Mr. Herlihy was arrested and taken before appellant for a hearing. The matter was continued, however, and appellee promptly filed a petition for prohibition in Superior Court (No. 3120).

Several months later (one day before Mr. Herlihy's resignation became effective), appellant swore out two complaints in the Court of Common Pleas charging appellee with misfeasance and nonfeasance in office. These charges were based upon the same occurrences described above. The warrants were never served, because Mr. Herlihy, having learned of their issuance, promptly filed another petition for prohibition in Superior Court (No. 3000). The two petitions were briefed and argued together in the Superior Court.

Motion was made in this Court to dismiss the appeal in No. 3000 because the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas had not joined in the appeal. We think the motion must be denied. Since appellant was a party defendant in that action and since the order below expressly prohibits him personally from taking any further action in any Court, we consider that he has sufficient standing to prosecute this appeal.

This Court has repeatedly indicated the purposes and functions of a writ of prohibition. They are summarized in Canaday v. Superior Court, 10 Terry 332, 116 A.2d 678, as follows:

'The writ of prohibition is a writ issued by a superior to an inferior court to prevent such court from exercising jurisdiction over matters not legally within its cognizance, or to prevent it from exceeding its jurisdiction in matters over which it admittedly has cognizance. It is designed primarily to keep the administration of justice in orderly channels, and to prevent unwarranted assumption of power over persons or matters not within the legitimate cognizance of the inferior tribunal. Clendaniel v. Conrad [3 Boyce 549, 26 Del. 549, 83 A. 1036], supra; Knight v. Haley, 6 W.W.Harr. 366, 36 Del. 366, 176 A. 461; Fouracre v. White, 7 Boyce 25, 30 Del. 25, 102 A. 186; 42 Am.Jur., Prohibition, §§ 2, 5.

Generally speaking, the writ of prohibition may not be distorted into a substitute for a writ of error for the correction of error, irregularity or mistake in the proceedings in the court below which can be reviewed by ordinary appellate process. 42 Am.Jur., Prohibition, §§ 8, 30; 2 Bailey on Habeas Corpus, § 357a. The writ will be denied if the petitioner has another adequate and complete remedy at law for the correction of the asserted error of the court below. Norton v. Emery, 108 Me. 472, 81 A. 671; High on Extraordinary Legal Remedies, § 770; Chew v. Superior Court, 43 R.I. 194, 110 A. 605'.

As stated in Clendaniel v. Conrad, 3 Boyce 549, 83 A. 1036, a writ of prohibition will issue from a Superior Court to an inferior tribunal only for the purpose of preventing the inferior tribunal from exceeding the limits of its jurisdiction.

It is apparent in the present case that the Superior Court based its decision solely on its conclusion that the appellee had in fact committed no crime. This approach, we think, was incorrect because it was in effect a decision on the merits of the charges, and therefore beyond the permissible scope of prohibition, in which the question to be determined is whether the inferior courts had jurisdiction of the subject matter and the person or were about to exceed their jurisdiction. But, even though we disagree with the reasons assigned by the Court below, we will not reverse its judgment if the orders entered were proper for some other reason.

As to No. 3000, we think the Court below should have dismissed the petition as having been prematurely filed. It is the general rule that prohibition will not be issued unless the attention of the inferior court has been called to the alleged lack of jurisdiction, or it has indicated in some fashion its intent to proceed. 73 C.J.S. Prohibition § 22, p. 99; 42...

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