Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson

Citations

• 223 U.S. 605
• 32 S. Ct. 340
• 56 L. Ed. 570
• 1912 U.S. LEXIS 2261

Syllabus

<p>Exemption of the United States from suit does not protect its officers from personal liability to persons whose rights of property they, have wrongfully invaded.</p> <p>In case of injury threatened by illegal action, an officer of the United States cannot claim immunity from injunctive process.</p> <p>Where complainant do.es not ask the court to interfere with an officer of the United States acting within his official discretion, but challenges his authority to do -the act complained of, the suit is not against the United States.</p> <p>While the general rule is that equity has no jurisdiction over the prosecution of crimes, it may, when it is essential to the protection of property rights, as to which the protection of a court of equity has already been' invoked, .enjoin the institution of criminal actions involving the same legal questions.</p> <p>An officer transcending the limits of his authority under a. constitutional statute may inflict similar injuries on property or individuals as though he were proceeding under an unconstitutional statute, and in either event, equity may intervene to restrain unfounded prosecutions.</p> <p>A court of equity having control of the person of defendant has jurisdiction of an action to restrain him from violating the rights of the complainant in regard to property not within its jurisdiction and may compel obedience to its decree. Phelps v. McDonald, 99 U. S. 298,</p> <p>While the establishment of a general system of harbor lines for the protection of navigation is not of itself an injury to property and cannot be restrained, equity may enjoin an officer from taking measures to maintain the limits against an individual proprietor and so prevent him from enjoying what he asserts to be a lawful use of his own property.</p> <p>A riparian proprietor of land bounded by a stream continues to hold to the stream as a boundary where the banks are changed by accretion or erosion, but if the banks are changed by avulsion, the title is