Darst v. Duncan

6 F. Cas. 1195, 2 Law Rep. 357

This text of 6 F. Cas. 1195 (Darst v. Duncan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Darst v. Duncan, 6 F. Cas. 1195, 2 Law Rep. 357 (circtedpa 1839).

Opinion

HOPKINSON, District Judge.

If the matters set out in the defendant’s plea can avail him to defeat the plaintiff’s action, it must be by virtue of some act of congress of the United States. It is now settled so as no longer to be a subject of debate, that “state insolvent laws have no operation, proprio vigore, upon the process and proceedings of the courts of the United States.” This is the language of Judge Story, delivering the opinion in the supreme court in the case of Beers v. Haughton, 9 Pet [34 U. S.] 359, and he there refers to various decisions of the same court in which the same doctrine is declared, particularly to the leading cases of Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. [17 U. S.] 200, and Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat [25 U. S.] 213. The opinion in Ogden v. Saunders is affirmed, and the principles there established are considered to be no longer open to controversy; the decrees of the court upon the effect of state insolvent laws are to be deemed final and conclusive. In the decision of Beers v. Haughton, the language of the court is particularly strong and explicit. “State laws,” it is said, “cannot control the exercise of the powers of the national government, or in any manner limit or affect the operation of the process or proceedings in the national courts. The whole efficacy of such laws in the courts of the United States depends upon the enactments of congress. So far as they are adopted by congress, they are obligatory. Beyond this, they have no controlling influence.” In referring to the cases of Wayman v. Southard [10 Wheat. (23 U. S.) 1], and Bank of U. S. v. Halstead [10 Wheat (23 U. S.) 60], the court say, “It was then held that this delegation of power by congress was perfectly constitutional; that the power to alter and add to process and modes of proceeding in a suit embraced the whole progress of the suit and every transaction in it from its commencement to its termination, and until the judgment should be satisfied, and that it authorized the courts to prescribe and regulate the conduct of the officers in the execution of final process, in giving effect to its judgment.” It must be borne in mind hereafter, that this power is limited to proceedings in the suit, to transactions in it, and to the conduct of the officers of the court, in the execution of [1196]*1196the final process of the court to give effect to the judgment of the court. It is added that this power of the courts of the United States “enables the courts of the Union to make such improvements in its forms and modes of proceeding as experience may suggest, and especially to adopt such state laws on this subject, as might vary to advantage the forms and modes of proceeding which prevailed in September, 1789;” and further “that the courts may, by their rules,'not only alter the forms, but the effect and operation •of the process, whether mesne or final, and the modes of proceeding under it.” We must observe, as particularly affecting the case now before this court, the example given as explanatory of this doctrine, “so that it may read property not liable in 1789, by the state laws to be taken in execution, or may exempt property which was not then exempted, but has been exempted by subsequent laws.” This is the language of the supreme court in an examination of the act of congress, we have to consider. It is true the case in the supreme court turned upon the construction of a proviso in the act, which has no bearing upon our case, as this court has made no such rule as is mentioned in that proviso. My object in referring to the opinion in Beers v. Haughton, is to show, that no court of the United States, nor any state legislature, can exercise the power claimed over the process and proceedings of the courts of the United States, which is a power over the rights of the suitors in those courts, but by and under the authority of an act of congress. The supreme court of Pennsylvania have unequivocally adopted the decisions of the courts of the United States, in relation to the effect of state insolvent laws, upon the process of the courts of the United States. In Duncan v. Klinefelter, 5 Watts, 142, the supreme court of this state say, “The provisions of the act of assembly (for the benefit of insolvents) relate only to debtors held under executions issued from the state courts. It has never been supposed that they intended to give to the state courts or judges power to control the process of the United States acting within the jurisdiction of the latter.” It is equally clear, that the order of a state judge to discharge a debtor from imprisonment by virtue ■of an execution from a court of the United States will afford no protection or defence for the sheriff or jailor who discharged him, if the judge in making the orders exceeded his jurisdiction. The object and design of the acts of congress, for there have been several, to regulate the process of the courts of the United States, have been to conform the process and the proceedings of their courts to the process and proceedings of the states, but beyond that, no act of congress has pretended to go, either in giving power to their own court, or in adopting state laws and regulations. It was the intention of congress that the process and mode of proceeding in the courts of the United States ‘should be in harmony and uniformity with those of each particular state in which the courts of the United States were held. Thus, if in any state .the defendant could not be arrested or held to bail on mesne process from a state court, he would have the same privilege against process from the court of the United States. If on final process of execution the person of the debtor could not be taken and imprisoned by the laws of the United States, he had the like exemption from final process issued from the courts of the United States; that is, if such exemption were given by state laws in force at the time of the passing of the law of congress, which was presumed to embrace or adopt the state law, but not to be extended to regulations which might be subsequently made by state legislatures.

The question we have to decide results in the inquiry, whether the discharge of Jacob Both from imprisonment by the order of an associate judge of York county, according to the provisions of an act of assembly for the relief of insolvent debtors of Pennsylvania, passed on the 2Sth day of March, 1820, was or was not' authorized by the act of congress of the 19th of May, 182S. If the act of congress adopted the provisions of the act of assembly, and made them the law of the courts of the United' States, then the defendant was warranted in discharging Roth from his imprisonment, and the order of the judge will afford him protection and defence against the claim • of the plaintiff in this suit. If, on the other hand, the act of assembly has not been adopted and made the law of the courts of the United States in Pennsylvania, then the order of the state judge was an act beyond his jurisdiction, and will not avail the defendant against the claim of the plaintiff.

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6 F. Cas. 1195, 2 Law Rep. 357, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/darst-v-duncan-circtedpa-1839.