Sparks v. Purdy

• Decision Date: 31 October 1847
• Citation: 11 Mo. 219
• Parties: SPARKS v. PURDY ET AL.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

11 Mo. 219

SPARKS

v.PURDY ET AL.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

October Term, 1847.

ERROR TO ST. LOUIS CIRCUIT COURT.

LESLIE & LORD, for Plaintiff.

1. The St. Louis County Court is not a place where “justice is judicially administered;” and this is the definition of a court which we find in the books. They are mere trustees or directors of a corporation. The machinery of a court is not furnished them; they cannot hold pleas; it may be that the County Court has power to enter up judgments against collectors, &c., but this is a power not unusual to all bodies having control and custody of public funds, as for example--treasurers in New York, &c. Rev. Stat. Mo., County Treasurers, art. 1, 2, 3. 2nd. If a court, it is one of the inferior courts of special and limited jurisdiction, created by the statute, and whose powers are solely conferred by the statute creating it. The County Court in Mississippi is held to be an inferior tribunal. So in North Carolina. So in Massachusetts. The Court of Common Pleas a similar court “have the powers precisely given to them by statute and no other.” Walk. R. 75; 1 Mass. R. 457. 3rd. Judges of inferior courts are amenable for any act done, or ordered or directed by them over the subject matter of which they have no jurisdiction. 15 Johns. 157. In Cable v. Cooper, Van Ness, Justice, says, “every tribunal proceeding under limited and special powers decides at its peril; and hence it is that process issuing from a court not having jurisdiction is no protection to the court, to the attorney, to the party, or even to a ministerial officer, who innocently executes it. This (he says) is a stern and sacred principle of the common law, which requires to be steadily guarded and maintained.” 4th. The third instruction asked for should have been given. If the plaintiff had lawful possession of the room he could not be dispossessed unless by some legal and competent authority after notice, or being impleaded. 5th. The first instruction also presents this question: whether under the circumstances of this case there was a conversion? We say, the taking was wrongful, and that it is of itself a conversion. 14 Johns. 431. The lawful exercise of authority over goods without any intention to apply them to the use of the party exercising such authority, is a conversion. 5 Cowen, 325, and cases there cited; 2 Esp. 180. If the property was wrongfully taken, there was a conversion; and if it had been actually restored and received again by the plaintiff, this action would be maintainable. The only effect of the restoration and acceptance by the party, would be to mitigate the damages; the action would be sustained.

GEYER, for Defendant.

1. The County Court of St. Louis county has by law the possession, control and management of the court-house, to assign and appropriate its apartments to use of the several courts to be holden in the county, and of the county officers; to protect the building from intrusion, waste and damage and to make and enforce such orders as shall be necessary to maintain such possession and control. The court therefore had competent authority to make the order, under which the property of the plaintiff below was removed from the room of the court-house, and neither the officer who executed the order, nor any member of the court by which it was made, committed any trespass. See Rev. Code, title Courts, §§ 15, 35; County Buildings. § 17, and special act establishing a Probate Court in St. Louis county, and for other purposes.

2. The justices of the County Court, having acted judicially and within the sphere of the jurisdiction of the court, are not liable to the action of the plaintiff below for anything done by the marshal under the order, however erroneous that order may have been. Stone and others v. Graves, 8 Mo. R. 148; Lenox v. Grant, 8 Mo. R. 254.

3. The defendants can in no case be rendered liable for any act done by the marshal, or other person, which was not directed to be done by the terms of the order of the court, or by the defendants.

4. Upon the assumption that the order of the court was unlawful, and beyond the jurisdiction and power of the court, and that the judges and the marshal were guilty of a trespass in removing the goods of the plaintiff, the facts show no conversion upon which to maintain the action of trover.

5. The instructions of the court as given are at least as favorable to the plaintiff as he could consistently with the law of the case require, the errors committed in favor of the plaintiff are not now the subject of inquiry. The instructions asked by the plaintiff and refused, assume that wherever trespass de bonis asportatis will lie, trover will also lie, that is, that every wrongful taking of a chattel, amounts to a conversion. A doctrine discountenanced in the adjudged cases above referred to.

SCOTT, J.

This was an action of trover brought in the Circuit Court of St. Louis county by Sparks against Purdy and others, justices of the County Court of said county, for removing property belonging to Sparks, from a room in the court-house of that county. Sparks was collector of St. Louis county for several years, and whilst holding that office, he occupied a room of the court-house, at the request of one of the judges, who used the same in the discharge of some official duties, and with a knowledge on the part of all the judges, without objection. The court replaced Sparks as collector, and on the day that he was superseded in office, made the following order: “St. Louis County Court, special term, Monday, April 15, 1844. Ordered, that the marshal take immediate possession of the room in the east front of the court-house, now occupied by Mr. Sparks, and that the furniture, books, &c., now in said room belonging to said Sparks, be by him removed out of the same to-morrow evening, unless the said Sparks will himself do it.” This order being shown immediately to Sparks, he said he could not then give up the room as he had no place to put his property in. On the next day the room was taken possession of by a deputy marshal, and the property mentioned in the order, together with some mining tools and surveying instruments, was removed to the portico in front of the room. After their removal, the goods were pointed out to Sparks by the officer. The goods were afterwards placed, it does not appear by whom, in an old room of the court-house; admittance into the room was obtained by raising a sash and entering at a window in the absence of Sparks; plea not guilty, verdict for defendants.

The court charged the jury as follows: 1. Trover is a form of remedy adapted to the recovery of damages for an injury occasioned to a person having the property in, or right of possession of personal property, by a wrongful conversion by the defendant, of such property to his own use. 2. The foundation of the action is not the acquisition of the property by the defendant, but the deprivation of the property to the plaintiff, and the action may be brought against any person who was a party to the conversion, although the goods were actually converted by another. 3. Proof of the direct wrongful taking of the goods and chattels, is of itself evidence of a conversion; therefore, if the jurors believe from the evidence that the property in the plaintiff's declaration mentioned, was at the time of the alleged conversion the property of the plaintiff, or that he was lawfully possessed thereof, and that the said property by the act or procurement of the defendants, or either of them, was taken out of the possession of the plaintiff, such taking is a conversion of the property so wrongfully taken; but if the wrongful taking of the property, did not interfere with the plaintiff's dominion over the property, nor alter its condition, it was not a conversion. And however temporary the conversion may have been, it will suffice to render the defendants liable, for a conversion which has once taken...