Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/494

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468
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

a special proceeding. We also have a statute giving the judgment creditor this contempt remedy. § 5185,Comp. Laws. The same distinction is clearly stated in an article in the fifth volume of the Criminal Law Magazine, at page 652. After referring to the decision in Yates v. People, 6 Johns. 337, holding that a conviction for a criminal contempt was subject to review on appeal, the learned writer says: “The same question subsequently came before the same court in Yates v. Lansing, 9 Johns. 395, and the doctrine of the former case was overthrown on all points, and has never been the law of New York from that date to this, though, as elsewhere seen, appeals are constantly prosecuted in that state from judgments in proceedings as for contempt to enforce civil remedies;” referring to the leading New York case of Sudlow v. Knox, 7 Abb. Pr. (N. 8S.) 411, already referred to, and also to the late decision resting upon that case. In Rapelje on Contempt it is said, at page 200: “In New York and several other states final orders punishing a party in remedial proceedings for contempt, e. g., orders imposing a fine in the nature of an indemnity to a party suffering injury by reason of the alleged coutempt, are appealable.” In this connection the writer cites the cases already referred to in this opinion, with others.

There is another class of contempt proceedings which are purely remedial in their character. This class embraces such contempt proceedings as were resorted to by a successful litigant in equity to secure the fruits of his litigation, in case of the refusal of the defeated party to obey the order or decree made in such action. Such a proceeding, while in form a contempt proceeding, was never instituted primarily to vindicate the court’s authority, but for the sole purpose of giving the successful suitor the fruits of his litigation. It was, in legal effect, process to enforce an order or decree. It was one of the remedies by which equity compelled obedience to its mandates. No execution could issue out of chancery. A contempt order was the process of that court. In such a case, as in the case of a proceeding under a statute giving the injured party indemnity for damages because of the contempt of his antagonist, there is a legal right in the suitor to demand that the proceedings be instituted. He