The Federal Reporter. Volume 4: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States. October-December, 1880. Page: 34
xiv, 928 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this legislative document.
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FEDERAL REPORTBR.
ohandise account, and no relief is asked because of the alle-
gation of coercion of the wife. It might afford her a ground
for relief, and she is made a defendant, as are her children;
for what purpose it does not appear, unless to enable them
to file a cross-bill to recover their alleged dower and home-
stead rights. But no relief is asked against them; they have
not appeared, and no process has brought them here. The
case must, therefore, be determined alone as between the
plaintiff and the defendant, Fargason.
Mr. Spence, in treating of this and the kindred maxim that
"he who asks equity must do equity," gives some curious illus-
trations of its application in ancient times, when the chan-
cellor, as a condition precedent to giving the plaintiff relief,
would require him to ask pardon of the defendant, to withdraw
slanderous words, to be dutiful to his parent or uncle, and in
one case to publicly on his knees ask forgiveness of the defend-
ant; all required because of some depraved conduct by the
plaintiff. But even in these cases the wrong redressed was to
the defendant and not a third party, and Mr. Spence says
they are cited, not as precedents, but curiosities of the law.
1 Spence Eq. Jur. 424, and note.
The cases cited by the learned counsel for the defendant
all show that the plaintiff was seeking advantage of or relief
from the bad conduct with which he was himself, charged.
Creath v. Sims, 5 How. 192; Wheeler v. Sage, 1 Wall. 527;
Bleakeley's Appeal, 66 Pa. St. 191.
The case of Wheeler v. Sage, supra, so much relied on in
argument, was a case where the plaintiffs had been disap-
pointed in expected profits of a fraudulent transaction by the
desertion of their confederate, whose greed induced him
to take the whole for himself. Relief was refused, so far as
the doctrine now under consideration was applied, because,
to have given them relief would have been to sanction the
nefarious transaction in the court. No such result will ensue
in this case.
Demurrer overruled.
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Boyle, Peyton. The Federal Reporter. Volume 4: Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States. October-December, 1880., legislative document, 1881; Saint Paul, Minnesota. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc36333/m1/48/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.