The Federal Reporter with Key-Number Annotations, Volume 250: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Courts of Appeals and District Courts of the United States, August-October, 1918. Page: 1,016

250 FEDERAL REPORTER

and trustees in bankruptcy as they do the accounts of clerks, marshals,
and other officers of our national courts. But such investigation as
declared by the act is made for the purpose of "the detection and pros-
ecution for crime," and not for the purpose of laying the foundation
for a civil action on the part of the government.
For the above reasons I am inclined to the opinion the plaintiff in
these cases does not show by its petitions such a legal title or right to
the moneys in controversy as authorizes it to bring and prosecute these
actions. However, over and above all, there appears another vital
objection to the prosecution of these present actions by the government.
[2, 3] As has been seen, the funds herein sought to be recovered by
the government came into the hands of defendant referees under and
in pursuance of orders made by judicial officers in the conduct of judi-
cial proceedings over which the courts of bankruptcy for this district
had full and complete jurisdiction of the subject-matter, the estate being
administered therein, of the claims of creditors and others thereto, and
with full and ample jurisdiction and power to make all orders, deci-
sions, and decrees with reference to the claims of the parties and said
estates, including the allowance of compensation to the referees as
officers of said courts under and within the provisions of the Bankrupt-
cy Act. The allowance of claims of any and all natures against an
estate being administered in bankruptcy is subject to review for error
therein at the suit of necessary parties thereto and interested therein.
An order allowing or disallowing any claim of any character against
an estate in bankruptcy is a judicial order. The jurisdiction and power
to make a judicial order, decision, or decree includes the power to
make it binding and enforceable until reversed or set aside by some
appropriate tribunal established for that purpose. The jurisdiction and
power to make judicial decisions includes the power to decide wrong
as well as right, and to make a wrong decision binding as firmly as a
right one, until reviewed or changed for error.
Any and all the matters of which the government here complains
could, if erroneous, have been corrected on review. That which the
government presents in these cases is not that defendant referees have
in their possession funds to which they have no right or title, or that
they or the court under whose orders titles to the funds passed to the
referees have acted corruptly in any manner, or that defendant ref-
erees have wrongfully appropriated to their own use funds not ad-
judged to them. On the contrary, the claim of the plaintiff merely is
that the judicial orders made allowing the fees as compensation to the
referees are not by the Bankruptcy Act, properly construed, allowable
under its terms; that is to say, that said orders are simply erroneous.
However, no obligation was given by either the defendant referees or
the able court by whom they were appointed, guaranteeing either the
government or private parties litigant against errors of either law or
fact. The law does provide a method for the correction of such judi-
cial errors. Such method provided was not followed. In my judg-
ment, if errors were committed in the making of the orders granting
the allowances complained of to the defendant referees in these cases,
they cannot be corrected in these purely collateral actions at law for

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