Kelsey v. Forsyth/Opinion of the Court

This is a writ of error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the northern district of Illinois.

An action of ejectment was brought by the defendants in error against the plaintiff, for a certain parcel of land described in the declaration, and upon the trial the verdict and judgment were for the plaintiff; a motion was afterwards made to set aside the judgment and for a new trial, and the judgment was accordingly set aside, and a new trial granted upon the terms mentioned in the transcript. In the proceedings upon this new trial, the parties agreed to waive a trial by jury, and that both matters of law and of fact should be submitted to the decision of the court. The case was proceeded in according to this agreement, and the court, as the record states, found the issue in favor of the plaintiff, (Forsyth,) and entered judgment accordingly; and to this decision, and to all the rulings and decisions of the court in the previous stages of the cause, the defendants (Kelsey and Hotchkiss) excepted, and sued out a writ of error to bring the case before this court.

It will be seen from this statement that in a common law action of ejectment the case was submitted to the court upon the evidence, without the intervention of a jury, leaving it to the court to decide the fact, as well as the law, upon the evidence and admissions before it. The case, therefore, is the same in principle with that of Guild and others v. Frontin, 18 How., 135. And the doctrine in that case was reaffirmed in Suydam v. Williamson, 20 How., 428, and the grounds upon which it rests fully set forth. It is unnecessary to repeat here what was stated in these two decisions. It is sufficient to say that the agreement of parties cannot authorize this court to revise a judgment of an inferior court in any other mode of proceeding than that which the law prescribes, nor can the laws of a State, regulating the proceedings of its own courts, authorize a district or Circuit Court sitting in the State to depart from the modes of proceeding and rules prescribed by the acts of Congress.

The judgment of the Circuit Court must therefore be affirmed.