Tucker v. State Ex Rel. Snow

251 P. 460, 35 Wyo. 430, 1926 Wyo. LEXIS 27
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 7, 1926
Docket1265
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 251 P. 460 (Tucker v. State Ex Rel. Snow) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tucker v. State Ex Rel. Snow, 251 P. 460, 35 Wyo. 430, 1926 Wyo. LEXIS 27 (Wyo. 1926).

Opinion

*437 Blume, Justice.

OPINION

1. The first point urged herein is that the court ought to have permitted a change of judge in the contempt proceeding. The court refused to permit such change, upon the ground that the affidavit therefor was filed more than thirty days after service of the summons in the main ease. Section 6419, W. C. S. 1920, provides, among other things, that if a party to a civil action in any district court of the state, files an affidavit alleging, among other things, that the person making the affidavit believes that, on account *438 of tbe bias or prejudice or interest of tbe presiding judge, be cannot obtain a fair trial, tbe court or judge shall mate-an order calling on some other judge to preside in the-trial of tbe ease. Section 6421, W. C. S. 1920, provides, among other things, that if a change of judge shall be desired by either party, the affidavit required by law and the motion for a change of judge shall be filed not later than thirty days after service of summons has been had upon the defendant or defendants. Section 6423, W. C. S-1920, provides for a change of judge in criminal actions, upon the same grounds as in civil causes, provided that the change must be demanded and the affidavit therefor-filed not later than the succeeding day after a plea of not guilty has been entered in the case and endorsed on the-information. It is contended by counsel for the defendant; Tucker that the limitation of thirty days, mentioned in section 6421, supra, has no application in the case, and we. think that this is true. "While it might happen that a. contempt proceeding would be instituted within thirty days after the service of the summons in the main case,, like that at bar, this probably would not be true in the majority of cases. And it is hardly probable that the legislature meant to leave it to chance whether a defendant in a contempt proceeding should be entitled to a change of venue or not. But inasmuch as no change of venue or of judge is permitted in a civil action at all, unless the change is requested within thirty days after service of summons, it necessarily follows that the legislation for-change in civil cases has no application to contempt proceedings. The more serious question is, whether section 6423, supra, providing for a change in criminal cases, applies. Contempts are often divided into those that are civil and those that are criminal. A civil contempt is one-where a person refuses or fails to comply with an order of court in a civil case, brought primarily for the benefit of the plaintiff. Punishment in such ease is meted out at. *439 tbe instance and for tbe benefit of a party-litigant. Tbe proceeding is in furtherance of tbe right of a private person, which the court has determined that he, as a litigant, is entitled to. Contempts for refusal to pay alimony may be cited as an example. Criminal contempts, on the other hand, are punitive in character and the proceeding is to vindicate the authority of the law and the court as an organ of society. Such contempts, while they may arise in private litigation, raise in a true sense an issue between the public and the accused. There can be no doubt that the proceeding in the ease at bar belongs to the latter class. State ex rel. v. Daugherty, 137 Tenn. 125, 191 S. W. 974; McGovern v. United States, (C. C. A.) 280 Fed. 73; Lewinsohn v. United States, (C. C. A.) 278 Fed. 421. Such proceedings have frequently been designated as criminal or quasi-criminal in character. 33 C. J. 701. In the ease of Gompers v. United States, 233 U. S. 604, 34 Sup. Ct. 693, 58 L. Ed. 1115, Am. Cas. 1915 D, 1044, a case involving a criminal contempt, it was said:

“It does not follow that contempts of the class under consideration are not crimes, or rather, in the language of the statute, offenses, because trial by jury, as it has been gradually worked out and fought out, has been thought not to extend to them as a matter of constitutional right. These contempts are infractions of the law, visited with punishment as such. If such acts are not criminal, we are in error as to the most fundamental characteristic of crimes as that word has been understood in the English speech. So truly are they crimes that it seems to be proved that in the early law they are punished only by the usual criminal procedure, and that at least in England it seems that they still may be, and preferably are, tried in that way. ’ ’

*440 True though this undoubtedly is, and though, further, we do not deny that if a change of judge is justifiable in criminal eases generally, it is, perhaps, just as justifiable in contempt proceedings like that at bar because of the fact that the personal views of the judge may play an important part in the proceeding, still changes of venue and of judges are purely statutory, and authority for the change of judge asked for in the proceeding in the case at bar must be found in the statutes of this state. Heather v. Palmyra, (Mo.) 276 S. W. 872; Holmes v. Coalson, (Tex. Civ. App.) 178 S. W. 628; Buchanon v. Crow, (Tex. Civ. App.) 241 S. W. 563; State v. Risjord, 183 Wisc. 553, 198 N. W. 273; Franken v. State, (Wisc.) 209 N. W. 766; Powell v. Sutro, 80 Cal. 559, 22 Pac. 308; Danielson v. Danielson, 62 Mont. 83, 203 Pac. 506. Now a contempt committed in the presence of the court, commonly called a direct contempt, and intended to obstruct the administration of justice, is just as much a criminal or quasi-criminal proceeding as that in the case at bar. 13 C. J. 57. A requirement that a change of judge should be permitted in a case of that kind would not alone hamper, but almost make impossible, the administration of justice, and we could not, accordingly, hold that the legislature, by the provisions of section 6423, supra, contemplated any right to a change of judge in such ease, even assuming that it could have constitutionally enacted such law, which is at least doubtful. And since direct contempts could not be held to have been so included, how could we hold that another species of contempt, namely indirect contempt, is included, when the statute mentions only “criminal actions?” It has been stated to be the general rule that a party accused of contempt is not entitled to a change of venue. 13 C. J. 60.

In Heather v. Palmyra, supra, it was held that a party to a civil suit is not entitled to a change of venue in an ancillary proceeding connected with the main ease, such *441 as a proceeding for the enforcement of a judgment therein. In the case of Gorham v. New Haven, 82 Conn. 152, 72 Atl. 1012, it was held that:

“A motion for an attachment for contempt, when there is a disobedience of an injunetional order, is not disconnected from the decree which it seeks to enforce. Such a proceeding is but an incident to the original action. In effect it is an application for an execution of a judgment already rendered. ”

That was the holding also in the case of Fiedler v. Construction Co., 162 Mo. App. 528, 142 S. W. 1111. And in the case of State v. Bland, 189 Mo. 197, 88 S. W. 28, 3 Ann. Cas. 1044, the court said, among other things, though perhaps by way of dictum, as follows:

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Bluebook (online)
251 P. 460, 35 Wyo. 430, 1926 Wyo. LEXIS 27, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tucker-v-state-ex-rel-snow-wyo-1926.