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119 Cal. 57

Ex parte Todd

California Supreme Court

Decided November 11, 1897

California Supreme Court · decided 1897-11-11

HABEAS CORPUS in the Supreme Court to the Sheriff of Sacramento County, to test the validity of an order of the Superior Court of Sacramento County imprisoning the petitioner for contempt of court. E. C. Hart, Judge. The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

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Decided 1897-11-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently August 2019 · most notably 17 Cal. 4th 396 - Moss v. Superior Court (1998), Van Hoosear v. Railroad Commission (1922)

30 state decisions

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Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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BEATTY, C. J., concurring.

¶1I concur in the above, but, even conceding that the failure of the petitioner to seek employment was a contempt, the order could not be sustained under section 1218 of the Code of Civil Procedure, because a criminal contempt is punishable by imprisonment not exceeding five days, whereas the imprisonment prescribed by this order is not so limited, but would, upon the facts found, be perpetual unless some charitably disposed person should donate to petitioner the means of payment.

¶2Nor can the order be sustained under section 1219 of the Code of Civil Procedure, because it is only when the contempt consists in the omission to perform an act which is in the power of the *59person to perform that he may he imprisoned until he shall have performed it; and here the express finding of the court is that ' the petitioner cannot pay.

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