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27 Pa. 233

Loomis v. Loomis

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided July 1, 1856

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1856-07-01

This was a bill in equity, filed by-Elizabeth Loomis against Dyer Loomis, executor of Dyer Loomis, deceased, to compel respondent to account, and pay the debts and legacies out of personal estate, and to enjoin him against the sale of real estate.

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Decided 1856-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently July 1951

3 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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¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Lowrie, J.

¶2We do not stop to discuss the questions of pleading argued in this case, because the whole subject-matter is without the jurisdiction of the Common Pleas and within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Orphans’ Court. There is no clause in the Act of Assembly relating to equity powers that even seems to give the Common’Pleas such a jurisdiction.. The discovery clause is intended to provide the court -with means of trying its own cases. The prevention clause was not intended to create any interference between different co-ordinate courts in the jurisdiction exercised by them, and especially to allow the Common Pleas to draw to itself the jurisdiction of the Orphans’ Court. The specific relief clause refers only to acts in pais, and not at all to acts that are directed by a co-ordinate court.

¶3And there is no need of such a jurisdiction in the Common Pleas, for the Orphans’ Court is of itself a court of equity. It has all the powers of discovery that are needed for the complete exercise of its jurisdiction. And it sits as a court of equity, and, in a rude way, uses the forms of a court of equity when it orders land to be sold for the payment of debts; and certainly the Court of Common Pleas cannot sit in error, even in this form, over its decrees.

¶4Decree. — November 7th, 1856. This cause came on for hearing at the present term on appeal by the defendants from the final. decree of. the Court of Common Pleas of Erie county; and now, upon due consideration, it is ordered and decreed that the said decree be reversed and set aside, and. that the plaintiff’s bill be dismissed at her costs, and the record is remitted to the said Court of Common Pleas.

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