Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/108

 maintained, as the facts of this case will sufficiently demonstrate. The defendant is the owner of an important line of railroad. Upon application duly made, this court, in the exercise of its unquestioned jurisdiction, seized the property and put it into the hands of a receiver, to be held, preserved, and operated for the benefit of the parties entitled, until the rights of the parties could be judicially ascertained and declared, and a sale of the property effected. We must presume that everybody dealing with the receiver knew the character in which he was acting; that he was the representative of the court, and acting under his orders, and that if any damages were inflicted by reason of any breach of contract, or wrongful or negligent act of the receiver, or of his employes [sic], this court was competent to award pecuniary reparation. It has the custody of the fund from which compensation is to be made, and why may the court not determine the matter by a proper issue at law, “by reference to a master, or otherwise, as the court in its discretion may see fit to direct?” This practice, besides having the sanction of the supreme court of the United States, affords a cheap, simple, expeditious, and effective remedy. This court having the custody of the fund out of which the petitioner’s demand, in case he succeeds, is to be satisfied, can order and enforce payment therefrom of any sum that may be found due him. Whereas, if the petitioner is permitted to prosecute his suit in the state court to judgment, and recovers, that court could not, by any process recognized by law, compel satisfaction. But the petitioner would, in order to obtain satisfaction, have to bring his judgment into this court and ask for its payment, when it would become the duty of this court to look into the merits of his claim and satisfy itself of its validity before making an order to pay it. This it can do as well before as after judgment in another court. The judgment in another court, recovered on a suit prosecuted without leave, against a receiver, would, as we have seen, be a nullity. It could not be enforced against the receiver personally, nor reach and subject the funds in the custody of this court in any other way than through an order made here. Being a nullity, and