Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/95

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

WHIIB V. ABTHOB. 88 �interest shall be allowed on all payments recovered in civU causes in a circuit court, beoause the government is not named nor intended by clear inference; that the doctrine that interest is an incident of the judgment, and bo follows the principal,, bas no application to judgments against the government, or to judgments which the govern- ment has by force of a statute assumed to pay ; that it is specially provided in some cases that the government sball pay interest on judgments or on debts as in section 1090, and in the act of March 2, 1875, (18 St. at Large, 481,) such provision being necessary, "because at common law interest would not be paid;" and thatunder section 3220, authorizing the repayment to internai revenue col- lectors of moneys recovered against them in a court for taxes col- lected by them, and of damages and costs recovered against them in suits brought against them by reason of anything done in the due performance of officiai duty, the practice had been to allow interest on such judgments from the time of rendition until paid, but that could "no longer be permitted." �It is contended for the plaintififs that the measure of the responsi- bility of the government is the liability of the defendant. There can be no doubt that the liability of the defendant to the plaintiff under the judgment, under section 966 of the Revised Statutes, is not only for the amount of the judgment, but for interest on it, unless that lia- bility is barred by other statutes. It is provided as follows by section ���" Interest shall be allowed in all judgments In civil causes recovered in a circuit or district court, and luay be levied by the marshal under process of execution issued thereon, in all cases where, by the law of the state in which such court is held, interest may be levied under procesg of execution on judg- ments recovered in the courts of such state; and it shall be calculated from the date of the judgment, at such rate as is allowed by law on judgmeuts re- covered in the courts of such state." �But the question is whether the government bas assumed to its full extent, by section 989, the liability of the defendant. It is very clear that it has not, even without reference to section 966, because by section 989 not only is it necessary that there shall have been a reoovery against the eollector, but there must be a certificate of prob- able cause before the liability of the government begins. This ia what was decided in V. S. v. Sherman, a case to which the pro- visions of section 12 of the act of March 3, 1863, (12 St. at Large, T41,) now section 989 of the Revised Statutes, were applied by section 8 of the act of July 28, 1866, (14 St. at Large, 329.). In that ��� �