Ex parte Sawyer/Opinion of the Court

by Morrison Waite

United States Supreme Court

88 U.S. 235

Ex parte Sawyer

By the mandate already issued in the case, we have required the Circuit Court to proceed with the execution of its decree in such manner as right and justice shall require. If the court refuses to proceed under that order we may, by mandamus, compel it to do so, but we have no power to control its discretion while proceeding. A superior court may by mandamus set the machinery of an inferior court in motion, but when that has been done its power under that form of proceeding is at an end. The inferior court is supreme within its own jurisdiction so long as it is acting.

The question then is as to the power of the Circuit Court under the mandate from this court to determine whether execution should or should not issue against the sureties in the stipulation.

It is not denied that the liability of the principal respondents was fixed by the decree of the Circuit Court. The appeal took away from that court all power over that part of the decree. Upon the affirmance in this court that liability was conclusively settled, and the mandate left nothing for the Circuit Court but to proceed in the appropriate manner for the collection of the money found due.

But the sureties occupy a different position. No decree was entered against them before the appeal. The order was that a judgment be entered if an appeal was not taken. The appeal was taken, and, therefore, this order never became operative. The case then stood in the Circuit Court upon the return of the mandate without a decree against the sureties, and until such decree was entered there could be no execution as to them. It is true that if the appeal had not been taken the requisite decree might have been obtained, but it is equally true that until a decree is actually entered the court retains the power to withhold it.

At the time of the appeal, therefore, the Circuit Court might have refused to order the execution against the sureties. The decree of this court simply affirmed what had been done by the Circuit Court; it gave no instructions as to what remained to be done, except that it should be as right and justice and the laws of the United States should require. The Circuit Court was left free to determine for itself what was thus required. If, in its opinion, the order in respect to the judgment and execution against the sureties should be carried into effect, it might so adjudge, but if, upon further consideration, right and justice should seem to require a revocation of that order, there was nothing in the mandate to prevent it from so deciding.

Some action by the court was certainly necessary before the execution could issue against the sureties. Such seems to have been the understanding of the libellants, for upon the filing of the mandate they moved for the entry of a decree against these parties and the award of an execution thereon. There could have been no necessity for a motion if the court was not to hear and decide upon the propriety of the action moved for. The power to act upon a motion and determine whether it should be granted necessarily implies the power to refuse to grant it. The Circuit Court, under this power, has acted and has decided that execution ought not to issue against these parties. This decision cannot be reviewed by us upon an application for mandamus. Error or appeal furnishes the only remedy in such a case.

There is still another view of the case which shows the correctness of this conclusion. The sureties upon the stipulation are entitled to an appeal from any decree that may be rendered against them. A decree against the principal respondents does not necessarily include them. Additional proof is required before they can be charged. Here the decree was absolute against the principal respondents alone. The order against the sureties was provisional only. They could not appeal from that because it was not final. It is clear, therefore, that the power of the court over that part of the case was not at an end when the appeal was taken, and that if the sureties were to be charged at all it must be by a decree to be entered after the cause was sent back from here. From that decree another appeal must be allowed, or the sureties will be bound by a proceeding to which they were not and could not be parties.

This renders it unnecessary to consider any of the other questions presented in the argument. As it was within the power of the Circuit Court under the mandate from this court to decide whether execution should issue against the sureties, we cannot revise its decision in this form of proceeding.

PETITION DISMISSED.

Notes