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94 Ark. 558

Ex parte Chastain

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided April 25, 1910

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1910-04-25

Kirby’s Dig. § 723. The judgment should contain a statement of the facts constituting the contempt. 73 Ark. 358. The grounds of the contempt need not be stated. 5 Ired. Law, 149; 73 Ark. 358; 14 East 1; 5 Dow. 199; 3 B. & Aid. 420; 11 Adol. & El. 273; 9 Adol. & El. 1. Contempt judgments were not reviewable at common law. 22 Ark. 149.

Relies on Ex parte Davies

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

affirmed · Decided 1910-04-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently January 1968

6 state decisions

40191019201930194019501960decided

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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McCulloch, C. J.

¶1Petitioner brings up by certiorari for review a judgment by the circuit court of .Sebastian County, Fort Smith District, adjudging him and another person to be in contempt of the court “on acount of language and conduct in open court,” and imposing a fine of $10 as punishment for the contempt.

¶2The above-quoted statement of the case is taken from the judgment of the court, and it is all which tends to describe the alleged contemptuous conduct. It is insisted that the judgment is void because it fails to set forth the particular language or to describe the conduct adjudged to be contemptuous. The court should have stated in its judgment the facts constituting the contempt; but the absence of such statement does not render the judgment void. Ex parte Davies, 73 Ark. 358; Ex parte Summers, 5 Iredell, Law, 149.

¶3Petitioner should have asked the court to recite the facts in the judgment, and, in the event of refusal, the facts could have been brought into the record by bill of exceptions. Having failed to do that, he has left nothing to be said in support of his attack on the validity of the judgment.

¶4The prayer of the petition is therefore denied, and the judgment is affirmed.

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