Pettigrew v. United States
| Decision Date | 01 October 1878 |
| Citation | 97 U.S. 385,24 L.Ed. 1029 |
| Parties | PETTIGREW v. UNITED STATES |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
ERROR to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Tennessee.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. W. Y. C. Humes for the plaintiff in error.
Mr. Assistant-Attorney-General Smith, contra.
The judgment in this case is for $1,354.35, and a question is raised as to the jurisdiction of this court, because it does not exceed $2,000.
If it is an action to enforce a revenue law of the United States, we have jurisdiction without regard to amount. Rev. Stat., sect. 699. If it is not such an action, we have not.
The counts in the original complaint are very clearly counts on a contract of bailment and for money had and received. But a demurrer to the declaration was sustained, and the case was tried on an amended declaration.
The amended declaration sets forth the seizure, while in possession of the defendants, of ninety caddies of tobacco as forfeited to the United States, on account of false and fraudulent stamps and inspection marks found there by Rolf S. Sanders, a collector of internal revenue; that said Sanders and defendants having entered into an unlawful and unauthorized agreement that defendants should sell the tobacco and hold the proceeds of the sale subject to the decision of the proper court, in proceedings to be instituted therein for the condemnation of the tobacco, said agreement was void; by reason whereof the defendants became liable to the United States for the value of the tobacco, which they have refused to pay. This is repeated in the second count, and the third is for money had and received. The substance of this is, that the tobacco being forfeited for a violation of the revenue law, and a seizure made, and the goods left with the defendants, the contemporaneous agreement is void, and the defendants are proceeded against in personam for the value of the goods so left with them, which cannot now be found. It would be a very narrow and technical definition of the pharse 'enforcement of any revenue law' which did not recognize this action as one brought for that purpose. If there had been no revenue law which made this tobacco liable to seizure, the complaint would be bad on demurrer. The foundation of the action is the right which the revenue law vests in the United States to this property, and it is the enforcement of this right that is sought in this action. This was clearly the view which the court took of the matter, and in that view of it instructed the jury as follws:——
'That if they believed the tobacco caddies had upon them counterfeit stamps or brands, that such fact forfeited it to the government.
'And if the proper officer seized it as forfeited, and the defendants sold the same by direction of the officer seizing it, and received the money, and had not paid it, or any part thereof, to the government, they remained liable for the amount so received by them, and they should find a verdict for the plaintiffs.'
The judge evidently understood that he was enforcing the revenue law against a person unlawfully dealing with property which had been found in his possession forfeited to the government by reason of a violation of that law. We think this court has jurisdiction, under the section of the Revised Statutes cited.
The third plea of the defendants sets out the facts that, up to the time the goods were seized, they held them on sale for commission for Glazier, Luko, & Co., of St. Louis, and knew nothing of the causes of the alleged seizure; that at the request of Sanders, the officer who made the seizure, they consented to sell the goods, and hold the...
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Admissibility of Alien Amnesty Application Information in Prosecutions of Third Parties
...over the defendants' writ of error unless the action being appealed was one brought to "enforce a revenue law of the United States." Id. at 386. The Court's jurisdiction therefore challenged on the grounds that, although the underlying seizure was pursuant to a revenue statute, the actual c......
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Snyder v. United States
...are civil actions, of which this court has jurisdiction in error, without regard to the sum or value in dispute. Rev. St. § 699; Pettigrew v. U. S. 97 U. S. 385. Yet, as has been expressly adjudged, they are so far in the nature of criminal proceedings as to come within the rule that a gene......