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388 F.2d 511

Docket No. 9142.

Dunn v. United States

Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals

Decided Jan. 24, 1968.

Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1968-01-24

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Dunn says that he had no free choice because the Mississippi court had ordered him to proceed with the trial before it. The record does not sustain the contention. Dunn further argues that his duty to his client required him to proceed with the Mississippi trial. Devotion to a client is no excuse for the violation of a court order. -X- * * -X- * *• “When a court has jurisdiction of the subject matter and person, its orders must be obeyed until reversed for error by orderly review. The district court had the requisite jurisdiction. Although it may be that Dunn did not have an opportunity to appeal the restraining order which had a life of only ten days, he should have obeyed it for that short period. The Supreme Court has said that: ‘Violations of an order are punishable as criminal contempt even though the order is set aside on appeal, . . .’””

quoted by 1 later decision, including 387 F. Supp. 702 - Hyde Construction Co., Inc. v. Koehring Company

“Whether the Texas court would have punished petitioners for contempt had it known that the restraining order petitioners violated was invalid, we do not know. However, since that question was neither considered nor decided by the Texas court, we leave it for consideration by that court *514 on remand.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including United States v. Dickinson

Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2283

Relies on United States v. United Mine Workers of America · Donovan v. City of Dallas · Howat v. State of Kansas

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1968-01-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently March 1984 · most notably Rush Pettway and Peter J. Wrenn v. American Cast Iron Pipe Company (1969), United States v. Dickinson (1972)

21 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

140196819701980decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1*512Jack N. Hays, Tulsa, Okl. (David H. Sanders, Tulsa, Okl. and Charles Clark, Jackson, Miss., on the brief), for appellant.

¶2Hubert A. Marlow, Asst. U. S. Atty. (John M. Imel, U. S. Atty. and Robert P. Santee, Asst. U. S. Atty., on the brief), for appellee.

¶3Before BREITENSTEIN, HILL and SETH, Circuit Judges.

¶4BREITENSTEIN, Circuit Judge.

¶5This is a companion case to Hyde Construction Company v. Koehring Company, No. 8717, 10 Cir., 388 F.2d 501, decided this day. Reference is made to the factual background there described.

¶6Appellant Dunn was found guilty of criminal contempt because of the violation of a March 11, 1964, temporary restraining order entered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. That order forbade Hyde Construction Company, its attorneys and agents, from proceeding with a state action pending in the Chancery Court of Mississippi. We have held in case No. 8717 that such order was invalid under 28 U.S.C. § 2283. Dunn contends that the federal court did not have jurisdiction because the case had been voluntarily dismissed under Rule 41(a) (1), F.R.Civ.P. We have held to the contrary.

¶7Dunn says that he had no free choice because the Mississippi court had ordered him to proceed with the trial before it. The record does not sustain the contention.1 Dunn further argues *513that his duty to his client required him to proceed with the Mississippi trial. Devotion to a client is no excuse for the violation of a court order.

¶8 Our decision that the restraining order was invalid because forbidden by 28 U.S.C. § 2283 does not destroy the criminal contempt conviction. When a court has jurisdiction of the subject matter and person, its orders must be obeyed until reversed for error by orderly review.2 The district court had the requisite jurisdiction. Although it may be that Dunn did not have an opportunity to appeal the restraining order which had a life of only ten days,3 he should have obeyed it for that short period. The Supreme Court has said that: “Violations of an order are punishable as criminal contempt even though the order is set aside on appeal, .”4

¶9Our greatest difficulty is that the district court acted on the assumption that its order was valid. We have held to the contrary with the result that Dunn is subjected to punishment for disobedience of an invalid order. A somewhat comparable situation was before the Supreme Court of the United States in Donovan v. City of Dallas, 377 U.S. 408, 84 S.Ct. 1579, 12 L.Ed.2d 409. In that case an attorney and others had been convicted of criminal contempt by a Texas state court for violation of an order which the Supreme Court held was invalid. The Supreme Court pointed out that the Texas state court acted on the assumption of validity of the order and said (Id. at 414, 84 S.Ct. at 1583):

“Since we hold the order restraining petitioners from prosecuting their ease in the federal courts was not valid, but was invalid, petitioners have been punished for disobeying an invalid order. Whether the Texas court would have punished petitioners for contempt had it known that the restraining order petitioners violated was invalid, we do not know. However, since that question was neither considered nor decided by the Texas court, we leave it for consideration by that court on remand. We express no opinion on that question at this time.”

¶10We believe that the same result should be reached in the case at bar. Accordingly, the judgment is reversed, and the ease is remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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