Fredericks v. Huber

Citations

• 180 Pa. 572
• 37 A. 90
• 1897 Pa. LEXIS 966

Syllabus

<p>Equity■ — Preliminary injunction — Equity practice.</p> <p>The sole object of a preliminary injunction is to preserve the subject of the controversy in the condition in which it is until the merits can be heard. It cannot be used to take property out of the possession of one party and put it in the possession of another.</p> <p>The status quo which will be preserved by preliminary injunction is the last actual, peaceable, noncontested status which preceded the pending controversy, and equity will not permit a wrongdoer to shelter himself behind a suddenly or secretly changed status, though he succeeded in making the change before the chancellor’s hand actually reached him.</p> <p>A bill in equity was filed by certain parties claiming the right of possession of a church. On a preliminary hearing, not conducted by the examination of witnesses under the new equity rule, and without evidence except a part of the bill sworn to as an injunction affidavit and a single other ex parte affidavit, and in the face of a responsive answer denying the facts set up in the bill, a mandatory injunction was issued, which prevented the clerical respondents from performing their functions in the church, commanded the lay respondents not to interfere in the management of the property, and practically reversed the whole status of the parties by dispossessing the respondents and putting the complainants in control. Held, that the preliminary injunction was improvidently granted.</p> <p>Equity — Jurisdiction—Ejectment bill — Ghurch law.</p> <p>A bill in equity filed by the members of a faction of a congregation of a church against another faction to recover possession of the church will be dismissed as an ejectment bill where the pleadings show that the former owner of the land granted it for use for public worship according to the uses and ceremonies of a particular denomination, and that he had subsequently re-entered as for condition broken, and had granted and conveyed the land to th