Rains v. Simpson

• Decision Date: 01 January 1878
• Citation: 50 Tex. 495
• Parties: P. P. RAINS v. LEVI SIMPSON ET AL.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

50 Tex. 495

P. P. RAINS

v.LEVI SIMPSON ET AL.

Supreme Court of Texas.

1878.

APPEAL from Rains. Tried below before the Hon. Green J. Clark.

J. J. Hill, for appellant.--This suit was brought by P. P. Rains, ex-sheriff of Rains county, May 22, 1876, against Levi Simpson, Eli P. Magee, and John McMahan, ex-justices of the peace and tax assessors of Rains county, for failing and refusing to turn over and deliver to him the tax rolls of said county, and for combining and confederating together to deprive him of the emoluments of his office, and maliciously combining and confederating together to injure him in his reputation, and to defeat him for reëlection to the office of sheriff of said county.

The defendants demurred generally and specifically.

April 10, 1878, the court sustained the general demurrer; to which plaintiff excepted and gave notice of an appeal.

The only error assigned is that the court erred in sustaining the demurrer of the defendants.

The plaintiff, in his petition and amended petition, presented a good cause of action. (Gen. Laws of 1873, p. 124; Sedg. on Meas. of Dam., ch. 21; Shear. & Red. on Neg., ch. 9; Calder v. Halket, 2 Benn. & H. Lead. Crim. Cas., 308, and note on 325; Shaw v. Brown, 41 Tex., 446; Crepps v. Durden, 1 Smith's Lead. Cas., 800.)

L. D. King, for appellees.

I. The petition does not disclose a good cause of action, and is subject to a general demurrer.

This suit was brought by appellant against the appellees, who composed the County Court of Rains county, because they, as a court, required appellant to give a new bond, and also for refusing to approve said bond when tendered them. In March, 1876, appellant procured a peremptory mandamus from the District Court of Rains county, compelling said County Court to approve the said new bond and to turn over the tax rolls. (Salinas v. Wright, 11 Tex., 577;Lipscomb v. Bryan, 22 Tex., 609; Sneed v. Moodie, 24 Tex., 159;Whitlock v. Castro, 22 Tex., 111;Robinson v. Peyton, 4 Tex., 276;Pryor v. Moore, 8 Tex., 252.)

II. Public officers who are required by law to act in certain cases according to their judgment or opinion, and acting under oath and subject to a penalty for neglect, are not liable for mistakes of judgment or want of skill, they having jurisdiction of the subject-matter. (Paschal's Dig., art. 7681; McDowell v. Van Duesen, 12 Johns., 356;Jenkins v. Waldron, 11 Johns., 114;Vanderheyden v. Young, 11 Johns., 150;Cunningham v. Bucklin, 8 Cow., 178;Wilson v. Mayor of New York, 1 Denio, 596;Horton v. Auchmoody, 7 Wend., 200;Harmond v. Brotherson, 1 Denio, 537.)

BONNER, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE.

The appellant and plaintiff below, P. P. Rains, as former sheriff of Rains county and ex-officio collector of taxes, sued the defendants, Levi Simpson and others, as former justices of the peace and ex-officio County Court of said county, for an alleged wrongful and malicious refusal to approve a new bond which they had required of him as such collector, and which had been tendered by him for approval, and had been rejected by them by order entered upon the minutes in open court, to his actual damages, in the loss of commissions, $1,000, and for exemplary damages.

On the trial the exceptions of the defendants were sustained and the cause dismissed, from which judgment this appeal is presented.

There were both general and special exceptions, but as the record does not show affirmatively any separate action of the court on the latter, we will consider the general exceptions only, which present the case of the plaintiff in its strongest aspect. The question, then, for our determination is this: Were the members of the County Court liable, personally, in a civil action, at the suit of the sheriff, for having wrongfully and maliciously rejected his official bond?

This question is one of first impression in this court, and we have endeavored to give it due consideration, both in the light of authority and upon principles of sound public policy.

We find for our guidance decisions of the highest courts of last resort. In the case of Yates v. Lansing, 5 Johns., 282, the question of the personal liability of judicial officers for official acts was most elaborately considered by Chief Justice Kent, and it was shown that, from the time of the Yearbooks, it was a settled principle and the very foundation of all well-ordered jurisprudence that every judge, whether of a higher or a lower court, in the exercise of the jurisdiction conferred on him by law, had the right to decide according to his own free and unembarrassed convictions, uninfluenced by any apprehension of private prosecution.

The learned chief justice considered this as a sacred principle which had a deep root in the common law, and said that “No man can foresee the disastrous consequences of a precedent in favor of such suit. Whenever we subject the established courts of the land to the degradation of a private prosecution, we subdue their independence and destroy their authority. Instead of being venerable before the public, they become contemptible; and we thereby embolden the licentious to trample upon everything sacred in society, and to overturn those institutions which have hitherto been deemed the best guardians of civil liberty.” (Id., 299.) This case, after full argument, was affirmed by the Court of Errors of New York. (9 Johns., 395.)

The principles upon which these decisions rest lie at the very foundation of all good government,--“the greatest good to the greatest number.” As has been well said in this connection by an eminent judge, “In the imperfection of human nature it is better that an individual should occasionally suffer a wrong, than the course of justice should be impeded and fettered by constant and perpetual restraint and apprehension on the part of those who are to administer it.” (Lord Tenterden, Ch. J., in Garnett v. Ferrand, 6 B. & C., cited in Cooley on Tax., 552, note 1.)

This privilege is not intended so much for the protection of the judge as an individual, as for the protection of society, by preventing the scandal and embarrassment which would follow should the judicial department, which represents one of the most sensitive and vital parts of sovereignty, be subjected to the separate prosecutions of private parties. As a delegated part of this sovereignty, the actions of the judiciary represent and affect the public; and if there is in the judge presiding such a departure from that true dignity and spotless purity which should characterize the high trust and confidence reposed, he is subject to be arraigned, punished, and removed from office by indictment or impeachment, at the suit of that power from which he derives his authority. As in many other cases by the common law, the private injury is merged into the public wrong, and by our laws protection is intended to be given to society, and indirectly to the individual, by the removal from office and punishment of the offender. (Const. 1869, art. 5, sec. 10; 2d Sess. 14th Leg., 48.)

From the very necessity of the case, this immunity from private liability extends not only to negligent, but willful and malicious judicial acts. As said by Chief Justice Shaw in Pratt v. Gardner, 2 Cush., 69: “If an action might be brought against the judge by a party feeling himself aggrieved, the judge would be compelled to put in issue facts in which he has no interest, and the case must be tried before some other judge, who in his turn might be held amenable to the losing party, and so on indefinitely. If it be said that it may be conceded that the action will not lie unless in a case where a judge has acted partially or corruptly, the answer is, that the losing party may always aver that the judge has acted partially or corruptly, and may offer testimony of bystanders or others to prove it; and these proofs are addressed to the court and jury, before whom the judge is called to defend himself, and the result is made to depend not upon his own original conviction, (the conclusion of his own mind in the decision of the original case,) as by the theory of jurisprudence it ought to do, but upon the conclusion of other minds, under the influence of other and different circumstances.”

To the same effect is Weaver v. Devendorf, 3 Denio, 117, in which it is said, by Beardsley, J.: “But I prefer to place the decision on the broad ground that no public officer is responsible in a civil suit for a judicial determination, how ever erroneous it may be, and however malicious the motive which prompted it. Such acts, when corrupt, may be punished criminally, but the law will not allow malice and corruption to be charged in a civil suit against such an officer for what he does in the performance of a judicial duty. The rule extends to judges from the highest to the lowest; to jurors, and to all public officers, whatever name they may bear, in the exercise of judicial power.”

That able jurist, Judge Cooley, in a valuable contribution on this subject in 3 Southern Law Review, (N. S.,) 547, says: “But our own view is, that the doctrine that a public officer, acting within the limits of his jurisdiction in the discharge of a discretionary duty, can be held liable upon an assumption that he has acted willfully or maliciously, is an exceedingly unsatisfactory and dangerous one; and that those decisions are safest and most consonant to public policy which deny it altogether. Motives are not always readily justified to the public, even in cases where they have been purest; and the safe rule for the public is that which protects its officers ??acting fearlessly, so long as they keep within the limits of ??eir legal discretion;”--citing in note 26 Sage v. Lanrain, 19 Mich., 137; Cooley on Tax., 552. To the same effect are Shear. & Red. on Neg., 157; Wilson v. The Mayor, &c., 1 Denio, 597.

It remains but to inquire whether the alleged wrongful and malicious act on the part of the County Court was such a judicial act as would protect...