Majority — WAYNE J.
Syllabus
When this court is satisfied, from the evidence before it, that no appeal to it had been granted- by the court below, and that the cause was not before it when an prder was passed, at the. instance of the appellee, to docket and dismiss the case, it will rescind and annul the decree of dismissal, and revoke and cancel the mandate issued thereupon.delivered the opinion of the court.
This cause was docketed and dismissed in this court upon the motion of the appellee, and- a mandate sent to the District Court from which the transcript of its record was obtained, for proceedings to be taken by that, court to give to the complainant'the benefit of its confirmation to the land in question.
He does so, alleging that no appeal had been granted to the United States in the court below by which the cause could be brought to this court for its revision ; because there was then pending in the court below, when the claimant obtained the transcript, a motion for the review of the decree which had been given confirming the claimant’s title; secondly, that the court had also under its advisement a motion concerning an appeal.
And the Attorney General further alleges,' that the appeal from the decision of the board of land commissioners rejecting the petition, and also that the appeal from the District Court to this court, are fraudulent.
The charges as to the two first rest upon the records which the appellee presented to this court, to have the cause docketed and dismissed.
The Attorney General relies upon depositions and other papers which are on file in the District Court for southern California, and which have been transmitted to this court by Judge Ogier, to establish the ehai’ge of a fraudulent combination between the then district attorney of the United States, Pacificus Ord, Esquire, and the claimant of the land in controversy, and his assignees, to allow them to obtain from the District Court a reversal of the land commissioners’ decree rejecting the claim.
W. C. Sims, the clerk of the District Court for fne southern district of California, deposes that the document on file, giving notice that the claimant intended to prosecute an appeal from the decree of the board of land commissioners, is in the handwriting of Mr. Ord, with the exception of the figures No. 278 and the signature of E. O. Crosby. '
The purpose for which this affidavit was made is, to show the interested connection between Mr. Ord and the claimant of the land, from the beginning of the institution of his suit to establish his right, and its influence upon the official conduct of Mr. Ord afterward, in every proceeding in the cause, after it had been removed from the northern district of California to the southern.
We shall cite the notice in its’words, for, as it had been in fact the subject of the court’s action, and could not have been so without the knowledge of Mr. Ord, and without his agency, it devolves upon him the task to disprove the declarations of Mr. Hartman of the forgery of the name of the law firm of Hartman & Sloan to the paper. We ought to remark, however, that Mr. Sloan, of the firm, is not shown by any paper to have had any personal agency in the matter. The notice is:' “Now, on this day, came the parties, the appellant by Hartman & Sloan, and the appellee by P. Ord, United States district attorney: Whereupon, on motion of the attorney of the appellant, it is ordered that the transcript and papers
After the confirmation of it in the manner as will hereafter be stated, Mr. Sloan, upon being told of the motion, and that it was signed by the firm of Sloan &. Hartman, but, in fact, as if the style of their firm was Hartman Sp Sloan, made his affidavit under a commission instituted by Judge Ogier, that neither as a member of the then firm of ’Sloan & Hartman, nor otherwise, was he ever retained or employed in the case; that .he never wrote nor authorized to be written any petition or, other paper in the case; that he never had seen such a petition ; that he had never authorized any one to use his own name, or that of the firm of Sloan & Hartman, in the, ease; and that, if the paper was signed as it is represented to be, it had been without any consultation with him, or his consent or approbation.
' The notice for a review of the decision of the board of land commissioners by the District Court, signed, as has been said, by E. O. Crosby, and wholly in the handwriting of Mr. Ord, was given after his connection as attorney for Gomez had ceased, and after he had become the half owner of the land. Mr. Crosby does not appear afterwards in the suit as the retained attorney of Gomez, nor does it appear in any other proceeding in the record of the case that he ever was so. It does- not appear that Mr.' Crosby was ever recognised by the land commissioners or by the District Court as the attorney of Gomez, from which we infer,-as the notice was in the. handwriting of Mr. Ord, that Mr. Crosby was his agent for the. purpose of obtaining a review of the case in the District Court. Afterward, upon its being found out that the land in controversy was in the southern district of California, and not in the northern, a petition was filed for its removal to the southern district, which was granted.
At this point began those irregularities which, until ex
The motion made for the removal of the cause to the southern district is said to have been signed by E. ~W. E. Sloan, Esquire, and presented by him in open court; and the order said to have been passed recognises that as a fact. On the saíne day, the firm of Hartman & Sloan is reported in the transcript to have filed a notice of appeal with the clerk of the District Court for the southern district. The paper has all of the formality and substance which such a paper should have, but Hartman & Sloan deny the fact of having had any agency in making such a motion; and these separate affidavits would be sufficient to sustain their disclaimer, were it not, so far as Hartman is concerned, that his subsequent conduct in the case shows a connection between himself and Mr. Ord, which throws suspicion upon both; and that is aggravated by Hartman’s deposition, by that of other persons, and by the narrative given, by Mr. Ord of his conduct in the suit.
Hartman then makes his affidavit, that he had no knowledge who made and caused the -petition to be filed, nor by whose authority and direction the same was done. But he states that, whilst attending the June term of the southern District Court in 1857, Mr. Ord, then United States district attorney, asked him if he would do him the favor to present a claim to the court for confirmation, stating it was a case in which there would be no opposition on the part of the Government. That, not suspecting there would be anything wrong about a claim to which the Government had no objection, he consented to do so; that, on the same day, the court being in session, and he being seated at fra bar table, Mr. Ord passed to him the transcript in the case of Gomez and the United States, which he read to the court without any remarks, supposing it' to be the case of which Mr. Ord had spoken to him; that after he had finished reading it, Mr. Ord remarked to the court that there .was no opposition upon the part of the Government to a confirmation ; whereupon the court replied, that there being, no objection, the claim would
Besides the motion of the Attorney General to vacate the order dismissing the cause, and to recall the mandate, a motion ;-js been fileu by the claimant for a mandamus to compel the judge of the District Court to file the mandate, and to permit the execution of the deoreé confirming the claim. Another motion has also been made by the claimant for a mandamus to compel the judge to dismiss the proceedings before.it upon 111e part of the United States, to open the decree, and to oh
. We shall not go into the consideration of these motions, but will confine ourselves to that of the Attorney General, using, however, such depositions as have been made under each of them, which correspond with and confirm the record presented to the court by the appellee, when he moved to- have the cause docketed and dismissed.
Judge Ogier, in a return made to the first motion for a mandamus, certifies that the cause was tried by him upon the appeal from the land .commissioners, and that he gave a judgment confirming the claim under the following circumstances:
Mr. Hartman presented the cause to the court, stating only' its title and its number upon the docket, and Mr. Ord appeared for the Government, and stated that there was no objection by the United States.to its confirmation. As a matter of course, without inquiry or examination, that he* directed a judgment of confirmation to be entered, but that no decree was given at that term of the court, nor was a motion made for one, or any motion for an appeal by the United States to the Supreme Court. At a subsequent term of the court, E. J, McKewen, representing Mr. Ord, made a motion for an appeal in this cause and in several others; that, being then in doubt if an appeal could be given after the expiration of the term of the court at which judgment was rendered, he took the subject under an advisement, and that then Mr. McKewen suggested that the same point was under consideration in another case before the Supreme Court, which determined him to reserve his decision until that point was ruled here; then that Mr. Hartman offered a judgment of confirmation, Mr. Ord assenting thereto, on behalf of the United States, and it was ordered.
The case remained in this condition, the right of the United States to an appeal being reserved until the-7th day of December, 1858, when Mr. Gitchell, having succeeded Mr. Ord as district attorney, filed a motion for leave to withdraw Mr. MeKewen’s motion for leave to appeal, and also filed another motion for a rehearing of the cause, substituting the last for a
Mr. Gitchell’s motion for a continuance was refused, on the ground that the proper motion under his charges was to ask for leave to file a bill of review. But Judge Ogier, feeling and thinking that he had improvidently given a judgment of confirnlation, did continue the hearing of the motions to obtain proofs, if any could be had, concerning the contrivance by which he had been imposed upon. A commission was issued by him for that purpose, and under it Mr. Sloan made the affidavit denying all connection and attorneyship for Gomez, as has already been recited in this opinion. The ease then remained in the District Court as it was when the motions which were made, without any further action upon that for an appeal.
This narrative has been given from documents, depositions, and declarations of the parties concerned in the case, and also by other persons, apparently disinterested, in respect to the land. They will'be found either on-the record upon which the cause was docketed and dismissed in this court, or in the book of exhibits sent to this court by Judge Ogier, which were obtained to enable him to act understandingly upon the merits of the case. The case being still before the court, we do not perceive any irregularity in the proceedings. Besides the motion for granting the appeal, the court had jurisdiction of the cause to determine what proceedings the claimant was entitled to
We will now proceed to show, ftom the record of the case filed in this court by the claimant, and from the official declarations of the clerk of the District Court from whom the record was obtained, that this court had no jurisdiction in the case when it was docketed and dismissed.
Mr. Sims, the clerk of the court, deposes, that in this case a transcript was called for by letter, signed W. W. McGarrahan ; that, when that letter was received, no appeal had been allowed to carry the case to the Supreme Court, and that a motion for that purpose was still under the advisement of the court. The deputy clerk, Mr. Coleman, however, sent to Mc-Garrahan a transcript, which was received by McGarrahan; and, that not being satisfactory, it was returned to the clerk, with a letter from McGarrahan, stating in what particulars it was deficient; and among them, that it was deficient in not having a copy of the order for an appeal to the Supreme .Court, which McGarrahan suggested would be found on the minutes of the court. To this letter a reply was given by Mr. Stetson, who had succeeded Mr. Coleman as deputy, containing an order for an appeal, as it appears on the transcript before us. It is difficult to determine how such an order found its way into the second transcript of the record,'when it was not in the first, and when the clerk deposes that no such order had ever been given. The. order for- an appeal may have been drawn in anticipation of the action of the court upon the pending motions, and left in the clerk’s office unintentionally, and supposed by the deputy clerk to have been passed by the court, or it. may have been drawn by Mr. Ord and left in the office, to keep up the semblance of his having faithfully represented the United States in the case, or it may be'that some one jf the parties interested in the land had surreptitiously placed it in the transcript to accomplish the purpose of having the case docketed and dismissed in this court. Dates will, in some -measure, throw light upon' the matter. It. was written and dated on the same day that the court took under its advisement the motion relating to the appeal. Such antagonism in
It is a delicate and most unwelcome task which we .are performing; but it must be done, in order that violated justice may be vindicated, and that official purity of conduct in our courts may be preserved and be unsuspected.
The record upon which this case was docketed and dismissed, in connection with the book of exhibits sent to this court by Judge Ogier, establish, in our view, the following facts:
That Mr. Ord became the purchaser of half the land in controversy from Gomez, the claimant, when he was the district attorney of the United States; that whilst he was district attorney, he prepared in his own' hand the paper, signed by S. O. Crosby, for the removal of the cause from the board of land , commissioners to the District Court; that Mr. Ord did .not officially, as district attorney, represent thé United States in the case in the District Court, in any one particular, but allowed it to be done by others, who were interested ;n establishing the claim of Gomez, to whom he gave his official confidence, and who are shown by the record not to have been the retained attorney of Gomez; that he permitted a judgment to be taken against the United States without argument, or the production of proof to establish the validity of the claimant’s right to the land, by saying to the court, in his official character, that the United States had no objection to the confirmation of the claim. And it is established by the record itself that no appeal has been given to the United States by the court below. Mr. Ord admits that he relies upon the declaration only of the person to whom he confided the order which he drew for an appeal, that it had been granted by the court.
Under such circumstances, we conclude that no appeal had been granted; that the cause was not before us when the appellee made his motion to docket and dismiss it.
■ A motion to docket and dismiss a cause from the’failure of the appellant to file the record within the time required by the
In vacating the order for the dismission of the case, and for recalling the mandate, we do no more than to correct a proceeding improvidently allowed by the court, under a misrepresentation to it of the actual condition of the cause in the court below. Orders of the same kind for misrepresentation have often been made and allowed. We cite two cases from the English reports. In Stewart and E. Drew, petitioners, and P. J. Agnew, in Shaw’s Reports, it was held'to be incompetent to repeal a case on the merits formerly argued, and on which judgment had been pronounced by the House of Lords, but that the judgment might be amended on a point in which .no decision had been given by the court of session, and on which no argument had been had, through misrepresentation stated in the House of Lords by the party against whom the judgment was pronounced. 1 Shaw, 413.
In ex parte James White, Courtenay et ah, 4 House of Lords Cases, 313, it was ruled upon petition that a judgment of the house given on appeal cannot be reversed; but when such appeal and judgment have been obtained by suppression
Much was said in the argument of this motion concerning declarations, and a correspondence of the Attorney General in relation to an appeal having been taken in the court below for the United States. It matters not what they were, or how the attorney treated the matter, if he was deceived as to'the actual fact of an appeal having been allowed. If it turns out to be that it had not been, any admission to the contrary cannot affect the United States.
Since the case- was argued, the counsel for the claimant, with the consent of the Attorney General, has placed before us an affidavit made by Mr. Ord, in explanation of his conduct in the trial of the cause in the District Court, embracing his connection with Gomez, and his purchase from him of half of the land in controversy. We believe it to be proper to give him the benefit of his own narrative, and therefore shall direct his affidavit to be printed in the forthcoming volume of the Reports of this term of the court, with this opinion.
We direct that the order for docketing and dismissing this cause shall be vacated, and that the mandate which followed it shall be recalled. . '
The motion of the Attorney General for such purpose is granted.