Peter Vivian Daniel

“ With reference to the conduct of the appellant, in procuring and enforcing the judgment at law, that conduct has been, by the answer of the appellant and by the argument of his counsel, sought to be sustained, upon the ground that, as attorney for Marsh, the appellant had the power and the right to control the judgment, and to carry it into effect. The power and right thus claimed for the appellant, like every other right and power, are bounded by rules of law and justice, and by consistency with the rights of others. ”

“ The offices of clerk and sheriff were never designed to be mere names, nor to be engines and pretexts, to be used at the will of any one. By what authority, then, could the appellant assume the functions of both clerk and sheriff ”

“ The mere belief, either of the sheriff or any other person, can have no operation where the law calls for full legal proof.
The objections here stated cannot to deemed narrow or technical with reference to a case like the present-a case presenting no claim to favor either in law or in equity; a case in which the respondent was and is bound to pursue the hair line of legal and formal strictness, and from which, if he deviate in never so small a degree, he is doomed to fall. ”

“ To meet the objection made to the sale in this case, founded on the inadequacy of the price at which the land was sold, it is insisted that inadequacy of consideration, singly, cannot amount to proof of fraud. This position, however, is scarcely reconcilable with the qualification annexed to it by the courts; namely, unless such inadequacy be so gross as to shock the conscience; for this qualification implies necessarily the affirmation, that if the inadequacy be of a nature so gross as to shock the conscience, it will amount to proof of fraud. ”

“ Here, then, is proof, supplied by the appellant, that the law had not been complied with. The acts of an official deputy are evidence of the acts of his principal, and are binding on all who fall within the legal scope of those acts. But it is not perceived how the rights of suitors can be at all dependent upon the unofficial and individual confidence of one officer, even when that confidence may not have been misplaced. In this case, there is no proof that it has been fulfilled; for no person shows that the notices had been in fact put up and published according to the statute. ”

“ If the position thus taken be true in fact, it rather aggravates than extenuates the wrong complained of, as it shows that, by the ignorance or the corruption of those officers of the law, the rights of the complainant had been surrendered to the mercy of one having a direct interest to invade those rights. ”

“ The appellee, Francis Surget, a citizen of the State of Mississippi, instituted his suit in equity in the Circuit Court of the United States for the eastern district of Arkansas, against the appellant, the object of which suit was to annul as fraudulent and void a sale of lands belonging to the appellee, made by the sheriff of Jackson, in Arkansas, on the 18th of May, 1846. ”