Volume 156 — United States Reports

United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895), also known as the "Sugar Trust Case," was a United States Supreme Court antitrust case that severely limited the federal government's power to pursue antitrust actions under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In Chief Justice Melville Fuller's majority opinion, the Court held that the U.S. Congress could not regulate manufacturing and thus gave state governments the sole power to take legal action against manufacturing monopolies. The case was the Supreme Court's first interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case has never been overruled, but in Swift & Co. v. United States and subsequent cases, the Court has held that Congress can regulate manufacturing when it affects interstate commerce.

<p>ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA.</p> <p>The case is stated in the opinion.</p>

<p>APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT.</p> <p>Motion to dismiss. The Mercantile Trust Company, a corporation of New York, filed its bill in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Kansas, June 8,1888, against the Missouri,. Kansas and Texas Railway Company, a corporation of Kansas, for the foreclosure of certain mortgages and deeds of trust, and George A. Eddy and H. C. Cross were thereupon appointed receivers of the company, and took charge of its property, which consisted, among other things, of a line of railroad running from Hannibal, Missouri, to Parsons, Kansas, and to Fort Worth, Texas. Ancillary proceedings were also had in the Circuit Courts of the United States through whose jurisdiction the railway ran. On October 11, 1890, Annie Letcher filed her intervening petition in that cause in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern Division of the Eastern District of Missouri, at Hannibal, claiming damages on account of the death of her husband, Harvey Letcher, occasioned, as she averred, by the negligence of the receivers, their agents, servants and employés. The receivers having filed their answer thereto, the matter was referred by the court to a master in chancery to report conclusions thereon. A hearing was had and ■ a report made by the master, May 18, 1891, recommending a judgment for $5000 in favor of the intervenor. Exceptions were filed and overruled, and the Circuit Court at Hannibal, on January 5, 1892, allowed the claim of the intervenor and rendered judgment for $5000 against the receivers, and ordered it “paid unto the intervenor herein, or her solicitor of record, by George A. Eddy and Harrison C. Cross, the receivers in this cause, out of any money or funds in their hands applicable to that purpose, or that the same be paid by the persons or corporations who have succeeded to the possession of the property lately in the custody of said receivers, who by the terms of the final decree, or previous orders in this cause, are chargeable with the payment of such claims.” An appeal from this decree was taken by the receivers to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the decree affirmed, July 10, 1893. Eddy v. Letcher, 12 U. S. App. 506; S. C. 57 Fed. Rep. 115. Thereupon an appeal was prayed and allowed to this court, which the intervenor moved to dismiss. The deaths of Eddy and Cross having been suggested, the appearance of Henry C. Rouse, appointed receiver in their place, was entered.</p>

Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895), or Sparf and Hansen v. United States, was a United States Supreme Court case testing the admissibility of confessions by multiple defendants accused of the same crime, and the rights of juries.

<p>No number.</p> <p>William Robertson was convicted of murder in the first degree, at the December term, 1892, of the county court of Eranklin County, Virginia, and sentenced to be hanged February. 3, 1893. A petition for'writ of error was denied by the Circuit Court of Franklin County', but the writ was subsequently allowed hy one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, which court on November 8, 1894, affirmed the judgment of the county court. 20 S. E. Rep. 362. Robertson ivas resentenced to be executed December 21, 1894, and a respite granted until January 25,1895. He then applied for a writ of error from this court, to one of the Justices thereof, which was denied, whereupon his counsel brought the matter to the attention of the court under the misapprehension that he had been directed to do so by that Justice with the assent of his brethren.</p> <p>In Virginia, every homicide is presumed to be murder in the second degree ; murder'in the second degree is punishable by imprisonment; murder in the first degree by death; and, under the statute, murder in commission of, or attempt to commit, robbery, is murder in the first degree. Code Va. § 3662.</p> <p>' One of the errors assigned below was that the county court overruled the motion of defendant to exclude all evidence tending to show that he robbed the deceased, his contention being that inasmuch as the indictment was in the ordinary form and did not charge that the homicide Avas committed in the commission of robbery, it was not competent to prove the robbery in order to raise the offence to murder in the first degree. The same question Avas also presented by an instruction asked on behalf of defendant and refused. The Supreme Court of Appeals held that whatever might be the rule elsewhere, it Avas competent in Virginia, under indictment for murder simply, to try and convict a person of murder in the first degree if the homicide Avas perpetrated in the commission of or attempt to commit robbery. It Avas urged on the application here that where robbery was relied on to raise homicide to murder in the first degree, two distinct acts constituted the offence, to wit, the killing and the robbery or attempt to commit robbery; and that to condemn the accused to death because the killing Avas in the commission of, or attempt to commit, robbery, under an indictment not charging him Avith the latter, was to deprive him of his life without due process of law.</p>

<p>ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON.</p> <p>On July 14,1893, there was returned into the District Court of the United States for the District of Oregon an indictment against the defendant, William Dunbar, now plaintiff in error, charging him in five counts, under § 2865, Eev. Stat., with the crime of smuggling. On November 25, 1893, there was also filed in the same court a second indictment charging him in nine counts with a violation of § 3082, Rev. Stat.</p> <p>Section 2865 provides: “ If any person shall knowingly and wilfully, with intent to defraud the revenue of the United States, smuggle, or clandestinely introduce, into the United States, any goods, wares, or merchandise, subject to duty by law, and which should have been invoiced, without paying or accounting for the duty, . . . every such person . . . shall be deemed guilty,” etc. The charge in the third .count of the first indictment was, “ that on the 2d day o'f September, 1892, in the State of Oregon and in the District of Oregon and within the jurisdiction of this court, the said William Dunbar did, on the steamship Haytian Eepublic, a steamship plying between the port of Portland, Oregon, in the United States, and Yancouver, in the province of British Columbia, Dominion of Canada, wilfully, unlawfully, and knowingly and with intent to defraud the revenues of the United States smuggle and clandestinely introduce into the United States, to wit, into, the State of Oregon, and within the jurisdiction of this court, and from, a foreign country, to wit, the province of British Columbia, in the Dominion of Canada, certain goods, wares, and merchandise, to wit,' a large quantity of prepared opium, being about 1400 pounds of prepared opium, the exact number of pounds being to the grand jury unknown, of the value of $15,400, subject to duty by law, to' wit, a duty of twelve dollars ($12) per pound, and which should have been invoiced, without paying or accounting for said duty or any part thereof and without having said opium or any part thereof invoiced, contrary to the form of the statutes in such cases made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the United States of America.” The fourth count was different only in the time and the amount of opium charged to have been smuggled.</p> <p>Section 3082 is as follows: “ If any person shall fraudulently or knowingly import or bring into the United States, or assist in so doing, any merchandise, contrary to law, or shall receive; conceal, buy, sell, or ih any manner facilitate the transportation, concealment, or sale of such merchandise after importation, knowing the same to have been imported contrary to law, such merchandise shall be forfeited and the offender shall be fined,” etc. The substance of the second, fourth, and fifth counts of the second indictment was that the defendant did “ wilfully, unlawfully, and knowingly and with intent to defraud the revenues of the United States. smuggle and clandestinely introduce into the United States ” certain amounts of prepared opium. The ninth count charged that “on the 5th day of February, 1893, said William Dunbar, in the District of Oregon and within the jurisdiction of this court, did wilfully, unlawfully, fraudulently, and knowingly and with intent to defraud the revenues of the United States facilitate the transportation after importation of a large quantity of prepared opium to wit, about 200 pounds of prepared opium, the exact number of pounds being to the grand jury unknown, which prepared opium was subject to a duty by law, to wit, to a duty of twelve dollars ($12) per pound, and which should have been invoiced, and which prepared opium on said 5th day of February, 1893, had been knowingly, wilfully, unlawfully, and .fraudulently brought, imported, smuggled, and clandestinely introduced into the United States and into the- District of Oregon and within the jurisdiction of this court, from a foreign country, to wit, from the province of British Columbia, Dominion of Canada, and upon which prepared opium no duty had been paid or accounted for according”to law, and none of said prepared opium had been invoiced, he, the said William Dunbar, then and there well knowing that no duty had been paid or accounted for according to law on said prepared opium, and that none of said prepared .opium had been invoiced, and that the same and the whole thereof had been unlawfully, wilfully, knowingly, and fraudulently brought, imported, smuggled, and clandestinely introduced into the United States and into the District of Oregon from said foreign country, said province of British Columbia, in said Dominion of Canada as aforesaid; that the said William Dunbar did then and there facilitate the transportation of said opium, after importation, by packing the same in trunks and causing the same to be transported as baggage from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco, California, contrary to the --of statute in such cases made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the United States.”</p> <p>■ On November 27, 1893, the court made an order consolidating the two cases for trial. Upon the trial of the consolidated cases the jury returned a verdict of guilty, as charged in the six counts above referred to of the two indictments. A .motion for a new trial having been overruled, judgment iVas entered sentencing the defendant to pay a fine of $1000, and to be imprisoned for a term of two years. To reverse such judgment and sentence the defendant sued out this writ of error.</p>

Held: and is now holding, the exclusive possession of the same to his own use and henefitP In other words, the basis of the petition was not only the depasture of these lands, but the exclusive use and occupation of the same.

This was an application by Louis F. Streep for leave to file a petition for a mandamus requiring the judge of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of New York, acting as judge of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, to resettle the bill of exceptions in a certain cause lately pending in said Circuit Court, and tried before that judge, wherein the United States were plaintiffs and Louis F. Streep was…

F TENNESSEE. Ejectment. The court below in its charge to the jury said : “ This is an action of ejectment in which the plaintiff claims the legal title to and seeks to recover 5000 acres of land lying in Campbell County, Tennessee. She deraigned her title to the land as follows : On the 2d of August, 1836, said tract of land was entered by Joshua English, Samuel Burgess, and Joseph Peterson by entry No. 843.

This was an action at law, brought by the city of Baltimore, defendant in error, against The Postal Telegraph Cable Company, plaintiff in error, a corporation created under the laws of the State of New York, in the Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore City, a court of original common law jurisdiction, to recover the sum of $1018.00, with interest from the 15th day of June, 1893, the same being an annual rental fee for the use of the streets of Baltimore, of $2.00 per pole, for…

Held: *212 (1) That the orderly administration of justice will be better subserved by declining to exer.cise appellate jurisdiction in the mode desired until the conclusion of the proceedings; (2) That if the judgment goes against the petitioner and a writ of error lies, that is his proper and better remedy; (3) That if a writ of error does not lie, and the Supreme Court of the District is without jurisdiction, the…

Held: That as the decree was operative to the extent of the foreclosure and sale, it could be sustained in respect of the accounting; (2) That the appellants could not insist, in this court, upon an objection which, if sustained, would curtail the relief to which the appellee was entitled, or overthrow the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court.

Held: though by a bare majority of the court, to be inadmissible for the purpose of impeaching his testimony. “ It seems to us,” said the court, “ that to allow the death of the witness to work an exception would be to destroy.the principle upon which the rule rests, and deny the protection which it was designed to afford. ...

<p>The invention protected by. letters patent No. 222,895, issued December 23, 1879, to William D. Gray for improvements in roller mills, is not infringed by the machine used by the defendant in error.</p> <p>Letters patent No. 238,677, issued March 8, 1881, to William D. Gray for improvements in roller mills, are void for want of novelty.</p>

<p>APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY.</p> <p>The case is stated in the opinion.</p>

Held: being absent from that circuit and from the city of Washington, the petitioner, on August 14, 1894, presented to Mr. Justice White, at chambers in this city, a petition for a writ of error upon that judgment, and for a supersedeas and bail pending the writ of error; and that Mr. Justice White signed and endorsed upon that petition the following order: *278 “ Writ of error, to operate as a supersedeas, allowed,…

Held: by reason of such discrimination, to be unconstitutional and void as applied to a peddler within the State'of sewing machines manufactured without the State. Mr. Justice Field, in delivering judgment, said: “ The commercial *316 power continues until the commodity has ceased to be the subject of discriminating legislation by reason of its foreign character.

Held: that leave should be denied, as, independently of other considerations, the requisition of the statute in that respect had already been sufficiently complied with.

The plaintiff below, defendant in error, bought in 1881 from the defendant below, with full warranty, a tract of land, the purchase price of which was $1200. In 1886, one Thomas Hugh sued to recover the land in question, averring that he had a superior title to that which had been purchased and conveyed as above stated. This action culminated in a final judgment, ousting .the defendant'therein from the property.

This was a bill filed by the National Bank of Rondout, New York, against David R. Smith, in his own right and as surviving copartner of D. K. Smith & Company,' E. P. Smith, Thomas R. McGahan, Daniel C. Stelling, Moses Brown and others, composing the firm of M.. Brown, Sons & Copapany, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of South Carolina, alleging that the bank recovered a judgment in that court December 15, 1887, against D. it.

<p>A party in a cause pending in a state court who petitions for its removal to a Federal court, or who consents to its removal, cannot after removal object to it as not asked for in time.</p> <p>It is the duty of this court, however, to consider objections to the removal ■ of a cause from a state court which are apparent on the record.</p> <p>In this case it does not appear from the record that the controversy was not a separable controversy, or that the case was improperly removed.</p>

<p>The improvement in sewer gratings patented to Henry W. Clapp by letters patent No. 134,978, dated January 21, 1873, involved no invention.</p>

After the organization of the Territory of Arizona certain land situated within its geographical limits was set apart as an Indian reservation for the use of the Pima and Maricopa Indians. Act of February 28, 1859, c. 66, § 3, 11 Stat. 401.

<p>ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OP THE UNITED STATES POR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA.</p> <p>The legislature of the State of Louisiana in 1877 passed an act which may be epitomized as follows: That no police jury of any parish or municipal corporation in the State should make appropriations or expenditures of money in any year which should, separately or together, with any appropriations or expenditures of the same year, be in actual excess of the actual revenue of the parish or municipality for that .year; and that all the revenues of the parishes and municipalities of each year should be devoted to the expenditures of that year, provided “ that any surplus of said revenues may be applied to the payment of the indebtedness of former years.” Extra Session Acts of 1877, p. 47.</p> <p>In 1879 (act No. 38 of that year) it was provided that it should be the duty of thé board of administrators of the common council of the city of New Orleans, in December of each year, to propose a detailed statement exhibiting the amount of revenues for the ensuing year expected to be derived by the city from taxes and licenses, and that along with this estimate of receipts it should be likewise the duty of the city to prepare a detailed statement of the estimated expenditures, exhibiting the items of liability and expenses for the year, including the requisite amount for contingent expenses during that time. The act provided that the estimate of liabilities and expenses should not exceed four-fifths of the estimated amount of revenue. It made it the duty of the city to adopt a budget of revenues and liabilities, and to levy the taxes and collect the licenses provided in the estimate in order to pay the same. It directed that the detailed estimate of receipts and expenses should be considered as an appropriation of the amounts therein stated to the purpose therein set forth, and forbade the diversion of any of the receipts from the particular purposes to which they were then appropriated.</p> <p>In 1882, in an act reincorporating the city of New Orleans, the foregoing provision as to the annual estimate and budget was practically reenacted, with the direction that the budget be published in the official journal. This law, in addition, provided as follows:</p> <p>“The council in fixing the budget of revenue and expenses as herein provided for shall not consider and adopt as a revenue miscellaneous or contingent resources and affix thereto either an arbitrary or nominal value or amount; but whenever such resources are considered and adopted they shall be estimated on a real and substantial basis, giving the source whence to be derived, a specific sum to be received from each item thereof, and no more. The council is hereby prohibited from estimating for expenditures to be derived from any uncertain or indefinite source, cause or circumstance; but the council shall, by proper ordinances, provide for the receipt and disbursements of any sums of money, interests, rights, or credits that may accrue to the corporation by bequest, grant, or any cause whatever, and all such sums, rights, interests, or credits so received shall be, and are hereby, appropriated for the purposes of public works and improvements, the manner and details of such appropriations to be ordered by the council.</p> <p>“ The council shall not under any pretext whatever appropriate any funds for the government of the corporation to the full extent of the estimated revenues, but shall reserve twenty-five per cent of said estimated revenues, which reserve and all sums, rights, interests, and credits received from miscellaneous or contingent sources shall be appropriated by the council for the purposes of public improvements as herein provided for.” Sections 64, 65, and 66 of act No. 20, Acts of 1882, pp. 14, 35.</p> <p>In 1886 the act just quoted was amended by providing that the council “ shall not under any pretext whatever appropriate any funds for the government of the corporation to the full extent of the revenues, but shall reserve 20 per cent of said revenues; which reserve and all sums, rights, interests, and credits received from miscellaneous or contingent sources shall be appropriated by the council for the purposes of permanent public improvements, as herein provided for.”</p> <p>In March, 1883, the city of New Orleans sanctioned the issue of transferable certificates of ownership for unpaid appropriations, which certificates entitled the creditor to receive a cash warrant for the claim in the order of the promulgation of the ordinance by which tire claim was authorized. The ordinance provided that the certificates thus issued should bear no interest.</p> <p>Prior to May 21,1890, the relator herein brought three suits against the city of New Orleans in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana upon transferable certificates of 1882, issued under the ordinance aforesaid. In one suit, No. 1900 on the docket, judgment was rendered in his favor on May 21,1890, for $4960.40 and costs, but without interest. Its language is: “ It is therefore ordered, adjudged and decreed that the plaintiff, Henry Siegel, do have and recover of and from the defendant, the city of New Orleans, the sum of $ 4960.40 and costs, but without interest. The said judgment to be paid exclusively out of such ■revenues of the city of New Orleans for the year 1882 as may be collected by said city from revenues set apart by the amended budget of the said city for the year 1882, . . . legally and properly payable, and for which appropriation was made by said amended budget, provided that the surplus of revenue of any subsequent year may be applied to the payment of the debts of the year 1882, according to section 3 of act No. 30, 1877.” A like judgment was rendered in the two other cases, the only difference bet ween, them being in the amounts which they covered — both amounts, separately, however, being below $5000. At about that time, or subsequently thereto, the defendant also filed against the city of New Orleans fourteen suits, numbered on the docket, respectively, from 11,914 to 11,928, omitting 11,922. These suits covered transferable certificates of the city of New Orleans, like those already referred to, for various amounts and against the appropriations of the years 1879,1880,1881, and 1882. These fourteen cases were heard together before the District and Circuit Judge, resulting in separate judgments, entered on June 19, 1890, in each case, as follows : “It is therefore ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the plaintiff ... do have and recover of and from the defendant, the city of New Orleans, the sum of-, payable out of the revenues of the year-, with full benefit of the provisions of section 3 of act No. 30, 1877.”' The proper blanks left above contained in the entry of each judgment a statement of the amount and the year against which the claim had been created. The sum of these seventeen judgments, payable out of the revenues of the respective years, was as follows: 1879, $21,008.36; 18S0, $3391.87; 1881, $12,311.78; 1S82, $35,366.17.</p> <p>Shortly after the entering of the judgments, proceedings by mandamus were commenced in all of the suits to compel the comptroller of the city of New Orleans to pay the amounts upon the ground that there was a surplus of revenue for the years 1888 and 1889 in the city treasury largely in .excess oí the judgments, and that the relator was entitled by contract to have them paid out of the surplus revenues of any year subsequent to that in which the indebtedness which he held was created. The seventeen mandamus proceedings were ordered consolidated into one cause, to be entitled Henry Siegel v. The City of New Orleans, under the number “ 11,500, consolidated.” The comptroller, in this consolidated suit, made re-' turn denying that there was any surplus of revenues for the year 1888, and averring, on the contrary, “ that the budget for the city of New Orleans for the year 1888 was $1,174,093.10 for the alimony of the city arid the sum of $88,752.01 for the reserve fund, making the total budget for all purposes against the revenues for that year the sum of $1,562,855.11; that the total collection out of the revenues for that year, to date of return was the sum of $1,550,502.32; that out of said amount the sum of $1,171,093.10 has been paid on account of the alimony of the city, and $17,313.05 has gone to pay claims out of the reserve fund; that $29,066.17 was in cash to the credit of■ the reserve fund for that year, and is retained to pay claims payable out of the sane; that if the said $29,066.17 'were paid to the creditors holding claims against the reserve fund . . . there would still remain unpaid claims against the said reserve fund to the extent of $12,342.82; that until said amount was collected there could not be a payment of all the claims charged against the reserve fund,” and hence no surplus existed. Facts substantially similar, the figures varying in amount, were stated in regard to the .funds of 1889. ' The return denied the existence of'any special contract right in favor of the judgment creditor as against the reserve fund of the respective years. A jury having been waived, the case was submitted to the court, and resulted in a decree refusing fhe mandamus, and the case was brought by error here.</p>

<p>A bill of exceptions may bé signed after the expiration of the term at which the judgment was rendered, if done by agreement of parties made during that term.</p> <p>If such bill is not delivered to counsel within the time fixed by the agreement, objection to the failure to do so must be taken when the bill is settled, and, if decided against the objector, the question should be reserved.</p> <p>If evidence legally inadmissible is admitted over objection, that fact is ground'for reversal by the appellate court.</p> <p>The assertion in argument by counsel of facts of which no evidence is properly before the jury in such a way'as to seriously prejudice the opposing party is, when duly excepted to, ground for reversal.</p> <p>Where evidence is admitted for one certain purpose, and that onty, the mere fact that its admission was not objected to at the time, does not authorize its use for other purposes for which it was not, and could not have been, legally introduced.</p> <p>It is the duty of the court to correct an error arising from the erroneous admission of evidence when the error is.discovered, and when such correction is duly made the cause of reversal is thereby removed.</p> <p>The fact of a divorce being confessed by the pleadings, and being admitted by counsel for defendant in open court, it is unnecessary to prove it, and the divorce record is inadmissible.</p>

Motion to dismiss, coupled with which was a motion to affirm. The grounds for the motion, as stated by the counsel for the defendant in error, were substantially as follows: The plaintiff in error filed in the chancery court of Montgomery County, Alabama, an original and amended bill against the defendant in error.

<p>ERROR to THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.</p> <p>The case is stated in the opinion.</p>

This was an action to recover damages for injuries sustained by the plaintiff from an explosion in an iron mine at Iron wood, in Michigan, alleged to have been caused through the carelessness and negligence of the defendants. It was commenced in the Circuit Court for one of the counties of that State, and on motion of the defendants was removed to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Michigan.

<p>The offence of wilfully misapplying by the president of the funds of a national bank, in violation of section 5209 of the Revised Statutes, is not sufficiently set forth by an indictment alleging that the defendant, as the president of a national bank, wilfully misapplied a certain sum, of the moneys, funds and credits of the bank, in the manner following, to wit, that the defendant, without the knowledge or consent of the bank, or of its board of directors, and knowing himself and another person named to be insolvent and worthless, procured of the latter divers promissory notes, some of them endorsed by the defendant, but all without other security; “with which said notes, by and through the device and pretence of discounting the same, and making loans thereon, and with the proceeds of said loans so made thereon and thereby obtained by him,” knowing those notes “ to be inadequate security for the moneys so obtained,” he took up and satisfied his indebtedness to the bank; that “ thereafter in turn, by substituting the notes of” the defendant, sometimes endorsed by the other person, and sometimes by some third person named, the defendant, knowing these notes to be inadequate security for the sums they represented, and they having with them no other security, took up and cancelled and pretended to pay to the bank the indebtednéss created to it by him as aforesaid; and that the defendant “did from time to time, by the fraudulent device and means aforesaid, as well as by passing differences between the face of said various notes and the indebtedness aforesaid, which they were from time to time to satisfy, to the credit of” the defendant to the bank, upon the accounts of the bank, gradually increase the amount of his actual indebtedness to the bank; “ all of which said sums were misapplied wilfully, and in the manner aforesaid, out of the moneys, funds and credits of” the bank, and were converted to the defendant’s use, benefit and advantage, with the intention to injure and defraud the bank and its depositors and other persons doing business with it.</p>

Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895), was an appellate case before the United States Supreme Court in 1895 which established the presumption of innocence of persons accused of crimes in a landmark decision. F. A. Coffin and Percival B. Coffin, plaintiffs in error, and A. S. Reed had been charged with aiding and abetting the former president of the Indianapolis National Bank, Theodore P. Haughey, in misdemeanor bank fraud between January 1, 1891, and July 26, 1893. It is a complex case with a 50-count indictment.

<p>ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON.</p> <p>This was a writ of error to review' a conviction of the •plaintiffs in error, who were jointly indicted with twenty-five others, for a conspiracy “to commit an offence against the United States,” in aiding and abetting the landing in the United States of Chinese laborers in violation of the exclusion act, by furnishing such laborers false, fraudulent, and pretended evidences of identification, and by counselling, advising, and directing said laborers, and furnishing them information and advice touching the questions liable to be asked them upon their application for permission to land, and by various other means to the grand jury unknown. The times, places, manner, and means of such conspiracy are set forth in the indictment.</p> <p>Most of -the defendants were arrested on the day the indictment was filed, and demurred to the same for failing to set forth facts sufficient to constitute an offence against the laws of the United States. The demurrer being overruled, the trial proceeded against twenty of the deféndants, and was concluded by a verdict finding the plaintiffs in error, together with one Dunbar, guilty as charged in the indictment. The others were-acquitted, except two, as to whom the jury were unable to agree. The usual motions for a new trial having been made and overruled, plaintiff in error Mulkey was sentenced to pay a fine of $5000, and to be imprisoned for one year, and Bannon was also sentenced to imprisonment for six months. Whereupon they sued out this writ of error.</p>

<p>error to and appeal from the supreme court of the territory OF MONTANA. .</p> <p>The case is stated in the opinion.</p>

Motion to dismiss. On the 20th day of July, 1893, in the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, Edwin G. Merriam filed a petition for a writ of prohibition.

Held: That, although the proceedings might have been in accordance with practice in the courts of the State, the plaintiff’s remedy was in equity according to practice in ‘the Federal courts, and that the demurrer should have been sustained.

Held: to show by ex parte affidavits the amount of the value of the matter in dispute, it would seem that evidence to the same effect, deliberately.put in by the very party now suggesting the defect, should be regarded as sufficient.

This was a bill in equity for the infringement of letters patent No. 271,363, issued January 30, 1883, to James Ritty and John Birch for a “ cash register and indicator.” The invention, as stated in the specification — “Relates to an improvement in cash registers and indicators designed for the use of storekeepers and others as a means of accurately registering the total cash receipts for any given period of time — as a day, for instance — and for indicating to the customers…

Held: by virtue of a general appearance or otherwise, to have waived the defect in the service, and to have subr mitted himself to the jurisdiction of the court.

Held: however,, that the courts of the United States, though of limited, were not of inferior jurisdiction, and that, if jurisdiction were not alleged in the pleadings, their judgments and decrees were erroneous, and might be reversed for that cause; but that they were not absolute nullities, and that the decree in the former case, while it remained unreversed, was a valid bar to the suit under consideration.

Held: that the application was wrongfully rejected, and that his rights under it were not affected by the fact that he took no appeal. These two cases may be considered together, for the initial fact in defendant now plaintiff-in-error’s claim of fight is the same in each case.

This case resembles the preceding in so far as the legal title is concerned. The action was commenced in the District Court of Allen County, Kansas, by a grantee from the railway company. In that court judgment was rendered in favor of the defendant, which judgment was afterwards reversed by the Supreme Court of the State, and judgment ordered in favor of the plaintiff for the possession of the land in controversy.

Held: that W. acquired no equitable rights, as against the railroad company, by his occupation and settlement. This case resembles those immediately preceding in that the plaintiff, now defendant in error, claiming title to a certain tract by deed from the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway Company, brought his action in the District Court of Allen County, Kansas, to recover possession of the land.

Held: that this was not error. This was an action brought by the plaintiff in error, plaintiff below, in the District Court .of the First Judicial District of Utah to recover possession of certain real estate.

Held: for example, that the States cannot by legislation place burdens upon commerce with foreign nations or among the several States. ‘But upon an examination of the cases in which they were rendered,’ as was said in Sherlock v. Alling, 93 U. S. 99 , ‘it will be found that the legislation adjudged invalid imposed a tax upon some instrument or subject of commerce, or exacted a license from' parties engaged in commercial…

This was an action by a corporation known as Wiebusch & Hilger, Limited, against the collector of the .port of Boston, to recover an alleged excess of duty imposed upon a certain consignment of carpenters’ pincers, scythes, and grass-hooks, imported from Antwerp in March, 1889.

<p>While the possession of obscene, lewd, or lascivious boohs, pictures, etc., constitutes no offence under the act of September 2G, 1888, c. 1039, 25 Stat. 496, it is proper in an indictment for committing the offence prohibiterl by that act to allege the possession as a statement, tending to interpret a letter written and posted in violation of that act.</p> <p>A letter, however innocent on its face, intended to convey information in respect of the place or person where or of whom the objectionable matters described in the act could be obtained, is within the statute.</p> <p>In an indictment for a violation of that act it is sufficient to allege that the pictures, papers, and prints were obscene, lewd, and lascivious, without incorporating them into the indictment, or giving a full description of them.</p> <p>When a government detective, suspecting that a person is engaged in a business offensive to good morals, seeks information under an assumed name directly from him, and that person responding thereto, violates a law of the United States by using the mails to convey such information, he cannot, when indicted for that offence, set up that he would not have violated the law, if the inquiry had not been made of him by the government official.</p>

This was an action at law by the Excelsior Coal Company to recover damages for the infringement of reissued letters patent No. 7341, granted October 10, 1876, to Martin R. Roberts for an “ improvement in coal screens and chutes.” It seems, by the statement of the patentee, that, previous to this invention, in unloading vessels of coal, the coal had, for the most part, been hoisted from the hold, over the bulwarks, and dumped upon the wharf or upon the coal previously dumped,…

This was a suit in equity, brought for the purpose of subjecting certain railroad property, formerly in the possession of a corporation known as the Florida Eailroad Company, to the effect of an alleged lien thereon of second mortgage bonds of that company, some of which bonds were held and owned, as averred, by the complainants.

Held: two justices dissenting, that the statute incorporating the company did not deprive the State of its power, within the limits of its general authority, to act upon the reasonableness of the tolls and charges so fixed -and regulated, and reversed the decree of the Circuit Court which had granted an injunction as prayed for in the bill.

<p>The fifth section of the charter from the State of Virginia to the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad Company, which vested it “ with all the rights and privileges conferred by the laws of this Commonwealth, and subject to such as apply to railroad corporations generally, subjected it to state laws regulating rates, notwithstanding provisions of exemption in statutes organizing other previous companies to whose rights it succeeded ; and the Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, when it became possessed of the property and rights of the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad Company, took them subject in like manner to such laws.</p> <p>In the absence of express statutory direction, or of an equivalent implication by necessary construction, provisions, in restriction of the right of the State to tax the property or to regulate the affairs of its corporations, do not pass to new corporations succeeding, by consolidation or by purchase under foreclosure, to the property and ordinary franchises of the first grantee.</p> <p>A mortgage of the franchises and property of a corporation, made in the exercise of a power given by statute, confers no right upon purchasers at a foreclosure sale to exist as the same corporation, but, at most, to reorganize as a new corporation subject to the laws existing at the time of the reorganization.</p>

Held: 'That this court cannot review those findings ; (2) That they are sufficient to sustain the judgment.

Held: That the judgment was undoubtedly void for want of jurisdiction; *681 (2) That nevertheless D. was estopped in equity from claiming that it was void ; (3) That in view of the uncertainty which appeared to exist in New York as to whether a complaint in an action at law would or would not he demurrable, it must be held that the remedy at law was not so plain or clear as to oust a court of equity of jurisdiction ; (4)…

Held: In view of the legislation of Illinois reviewed in the opinion, and of the provisions in the constitution of 1870, which came into force after the vote to issue the bonds, but before their issue, that the county court by its order to issue the bonds, and the county Officers by issuing them, violated their duty as prescribed by the statutes; and as the bonds contained no rebital pre eluding inquiry as to the…