Where a proceeding is begun which questions the title of the receiver, there, undoubtedly, the Court not only will restrain the further prosecution of the action, but may, if it think fit, punish those by whom the action was brought without leave, as for a contempt. In an anonymous case (a), where an application was made for liberty to defend an ejectment brought against a receiver, Mr. Lloyd, amicus curia, stated the general understanding of the profession to be, that no person could bring ejectment without the permission of the Court, and that whoever did so would be committed. In fact, such a proceeding is a rescinding of the Court's appointment. This, then, is clear; but it is said not to be the present case, in which, it is alleged, the receiver's title is not disputed; and for the present I shall suppose that to be so. Again, where an irregularity has been committed in executing the process of the Court, if the Court has declared the execution irregular, and discharged the party from custody, nothing can be more clear than that he has been illegally detained, and that he would have a right to bring his action for the false imprisonment, unless this Court interfered to prevent such a proceeding. This point has been fully considered in several cases, particularly in Frowd v. Lawrence (b), and afterwards by me in Green v. Wilkins, in the course of the sittings after Michaelmas term 1831. Lord Eldon, as well as myself, felt that it was a strong jurisdiction. For what, indeed, was it but saying, -a subject has been falsely imprisoned, and yet he shall have no remedy before a jury, because the injury done was committed in executing the process of the Court of Chancery? The Court excludes all other jurisdiction in every thing relating to its pro (a) 6 Ves. 287. (b) 1 J. & W.655. cess, 1834. ASTON v. HERON. 1834. ASTON v. HERON. cess, not only preventing any other court from judging whether or not its orders were regular, but from examining into the regularity of their execution; and not only preventing such examination, but shutting out redress at any hands but its own, where a wrongful act is admitted to have been done under colour of obeying its commands. It assumes to be the only judge of all that regards the issuing and the execution of its own orders. Whether or not it be necessary that the Court should enjoy this jurisdiction, and have the power of enforcing it, exclusive of all interference, even where its orders cannot be said to have been obeyed, but rather have been colourably used as a pretext for wrong-doing, it is now too late to inquire. The question has been settled long ago. The case of Bailey v. Devereux (a), and still more that of May v. Hook (b), clearly prove that in all cases of this kind the Court, on the application of those who are sued for what they have done in executing its process, may interpose to prevent or stay such proceedings; and in Frowd v. Lawrence, Lord Eldon, while he admitted the jurisdiction to be very strong which prevented a party falsely imprisoned from appealing to a jury, nevertheless felt that he was not at liberty to give it up. That these cases shew the right to reside in the Court, I am quite ready to admit; but I do not think that they go further. They do not shew that the Court must, in all such instances, exercise the right. They do not limit its discretion, although they prove its authority. (a) 1 Vern. 269.; stated from the Registrar's book, in 1 J. & W.660. n. Wherever (b) 1 Dick. 619.; stated from the Registrar's book, in 1 J. & W.663. n. Wherever the title of its officers, whether receivers or committees, is disputed, the Court has no choice: it cannot allow any proceedings of the kind to go on without abandoning its own jurisdiction; it must restrain as of course, otherwise it permits its own orders to be rescinded, and its jurisdiction to be questionedits orders to be rescinded indirectly, and not by the superior court of appeal; its jurisdiction to be questioned by courts of inferior or co-ordinate authority. If, for example, ejectment could be maintained against a receiver, and possession be thereby recovered, what would this be, but to enable the court and jury to discharge the order for the receiver, or, what is still more absurd, to frustrate that order by preventing its execution? But where the process has been irregularly, that is, illegally, used, where it has been made the pretext for doing wrong, no considerations either of principle or of practical convenience can require that the Court should, in every case, draw to itself the examination of the matter, prevent all other tribunals from punishing the wrongdoer, and exclude the injured party from access to all redress, save that which its own jurisdiction can afford. Thus, put the case of an excess committed in performing the orders issued. Suppose that the wrong party has been attached for a contempt, and hurried to prison in despite of the most satisfactory assurances, and even proofs furnished on the spot, that the officer was mistaken; or suppose him carried to a wrong prison, to a prison out of the jurisdiction, and contrary to the provisions of the habeas corpus act; surely it would be preposterous to contend that this Court alone could punish or redress wrongs like these preposterous to apprehend any peril to its jurisdiction-puerile to imagine that its dignity would sustain any diminution if the wrongdoer were left to answer for his offence before a jury of Dd3 his 1834. ASTON บ. HERON. 1834. ASTON บ. HERON. his countrymen, and that convenient tribunal were allowed to award the compensation which the sufferer should receive. It is fit, and even necessary, that in all such cases the Court should possess the power of itself interposing and drawing exclusively within its own precincts the functions both of penal and of remedial judicature. The Court should have authority, alone if it sees occasion, to perform the office of punishing the wrong-doer and giving redress to the injured; but that it well and safely may share this jurisdiction with the legal tribunals of the country, that it well and safely may delegate to them the task of such visitation, I hold to be alike clear upon the reason of the thing, and consistent with all the analogies in which the general doctrine of contempt abounds. Take the case, for example, of other courts of high jurisdiction. If the process of the King's Bench has been abused, false imprisonment will lie before the Common Pleas or Exchequer, although neither of these Courts could directly examine an order made by the King's Bench; nor will the latter Court stop, indeed it has no power to stop, an action thus brought, upon the ground that the irregularity was in executing its process -that no other Court can judge of what is or is not a breach of its rules, and that it alone can give redress for the injuries committed in its name. The High Court of Parliament, endowed with loftier functions, lays claim to more ample privileges; the rather, because these have never been with absolute precision ascertained. Where, therefore, any thing has been done in execution of their orders, the Commons have been frequently in the habit of refusing to allow the matter to come in question before any other tribunal. But they have never held it to be obligatory upon them in all cases to be the sole judges of the due execution of their own process. Nor have they deemed deemed it any abandonment of their rights, or degradation of their state, to permit the conduct of persons executing their orders, nay, to allow the extent of their privileges themselves to become incidentally the subject of examination in courts of subordinate jurisdiction. The same assembly which, in the reign of Queen Anne, committed to prison the counsel who argued a writ of error on a record touching a right of contested election, and which half a century later went to the preposterous extremity (I speak it with all reverence) of trying, or rather violently asserting, a right of fishing claimed by a member, through the medium of committing those who disputed it to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, will not easily be suspected of too little tenacity in holding by its privileges, or too scrupulous a reluctance in sustaining its dignity; and yet that same body allowed all the Courts of Westminster Hall to question its right of commitment a few years ago, and I myself, albeit then a member, was suffered, and with impunity, to argue against that right before the other house of Parliament, and to treat the power assumed by the Commons as an illegal usurpation. Enough assuredly has been said to prove that the Court of Chancery, though clothed with, the undoubted right of preventing any other tribunal from examining questions arising out of the execution of its orders, is not bound upon any principle to exclude such concurrent jurisdiction in every case, whatever be the circumstances that may have attended it. The two descriptions of cases to which I have adverted those where the jurisdiction of the Court is disputed directly by resistance, or indirectly by obstruction, and those where complaint is only made of the irregular or oppressive, and therefore illegal execution of its unquestioned decrees-do neither of them accurately embrace the facts of the present case, although 1834. ASTON v. HERON. |