United States v. Hoffman
Decision Date | 01 December 1866 |
Citation | 71 U.S. 158,18 L.Ed. 354,4 Wall. 158 |
Parties | UNITED STATES v. HOFFMAN |
Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
ON a motion for prohibition.
At the last term of this court the relator made application for a writ of prohibition to the judge of the District Court of the Northern District of California, to prevent that court from proceeding further in a certain cause in admiralty. This court, without looking into the question of the alleged want of jurisdiction, granted a rule on the judge of that court to show cause why the writ should not be issued; and an order accompanied the rule, that he should proceed no further in the case until the decision of this court in the premises.
The return of the judge to that rule was now before this court. The substance of it was, that after the rule had been served upon him the libellant in the admiralty suit came into court, and moved for permission to pay all the costs that had accrued, and to dismiss his suit. After hearing argument the court granted the motion, and the libellant, having paid all the costs of both parties, an order was made dismissing the suit.
The relator now asked that the writ of prohibition might issue notwithstanding the return, and whether it should or not, presented the question to be here decided.
The suggestion of the relator, it may be here mentioned, stated that four other suits in admiralty against vessels owned by him, and founded on libels of the same character as the libel in this case, were pending in the same court.
Mr. Carlisle, in support of the motion:
The only fact stated in the return which can be alleged as cause why the prohibition should not issue, is that the libel has been dismissed by the order of the District Court.
This, however, was done after the rule was issued, and after it had been served, and against the objection of the party here suing for the prohibition, and while the question of the writ was sub judice, and was against the express mandate in the rule, that further proceedings in the said District Court upon the said libel be stayed until the further order of this court in the premises. It is therefore wholly impertinent to the return, and is at best mere surplusage.
But if such subsequent proceedings be properly before the court they present no objection to the writ. The law upon this subject is fully stated by Lord Coke, in his second Institute.1
And the law continues the same to this day.2
The authorities, however, cited in the note, fall short of the present case, and the books, it is believed, furnish no instance of an inferior court proceeding in any direction or to any degree in the suit before it, while the very question of its jurisdiction was pending upon a motion for a prohibition in a superior court. Still less can any case be found of an inferior court so proceeding in the face of an express mandate to stay all proceedings in the premises until further order.
To allow the prohibition to be defeated in this manner would not only be against principle and precedent, but injurious and vexatious to the party suing here.
It appears by the suggestion that other suits by libel against the vessels of the same party are pending in the same court, under similar...
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