United States v. One Distillery

• Decision Date: 24 April 1899
• Docket Number: No. 190,190
• Citation: 43 L.Ed. 929,174 U.S. 149,19 S.Ct. 624
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. ONE DISTILLERY et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

174 U.S. 149

19 S.Ct. 624

43 L.Ed. 929

UNITED STATES

v ONE DISTILLERY et al.

No. 190.

April 24, 1899.

Asst. Atty. Gen. Boyd, for the United States.

Samuel G. Hilborn, for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice HARLAN delivered the opinion of the court.

This was an information filed November 13, 1888, in the district court of the United States for the Southern district of California, to obtain a decree declaring that certain real and personal property which had been seized by a collector of internal revenue was forfeited to the United States.

The information was based upon sections 3257, 3281, 3305, 3453, and 3456 of the Revised Statutes.

The property in question once belonged to the Fruitvale Wine & Fruit Company, a corporation of California. The acts that were set forth as constituting the grounds of forfeit- ure were recommitted, if at all, while that corporation owned the property. Subsequently, June 9, 1888, the property was purchased by Wolters, Helm, Austin, and Coffman at a public sale thereof by the assignee of the company, the consideration, $7,700, being paid in cash to the assignee. They appeared and filed a demurrer to the original information. The demurrer was confessed, and an amended information was filed January 11, 1889.

Wolters, Helm, Austin, and Coffman, on the 19th day of April, 1899, filed an answer to the amended information, controverting its material allegations. The answer contained these, among other, averments: 'That they [the claimants] have not sufficient information in regard to the several wrongful acts alleged to have been perpetrated by said corporation on which to found a belief. They therefore, on behalf of said corporation, deny all and singular the alleged fraudulent cts charged in said information as having been done and performed by said corporation.'

On the 21st day of August, 1890, the claimants filed an amendment of their original answer, in which they averred that in December, 1888, W. Moore Young, who was secretary of the Fruitvale Wine & Fruit Company, and one of the owners of the property in question when the acts complained of in the original and amended information were committed, was indicted in the same court, and was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for one year in the county jail. The claimants further averred that the acts complained of in this case were the same as those relied on by the government in its prosecution against Young, and that because of the proceedings and judgment against Young the United States ought not to maintain its present action. The amended answer concluded: 'These claimants aver the foregoing in addition to their answer already on file herein, and expressly rely not only upon this, but upon all of the allegations and denials contained in said original answer. And, having fully answered, they pray as they have heretofore prayed in said original answer.'

The demurrer to the amended answer was overruled by an order entered October 20, 1890, and an exception was taken by the United States to the action of the court. 43 Fed. 846. On the next day, the following decree was entered: 'This cause came on regularly for trial before the court, sitting without a jury, a jury trial having been expressly waived in writing, the United States being represented by ...