Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/292

266 266 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. This statute, like all statutes providing for the imposition of penalties, is construed with the utmost strictness; and in all matters pertaining to suits to recover penalties under the statute the most rigorous rules of procedure are enforced against the per- son posing as the informer. Only in criminal actions are matters of doubt so consistently resolved in favor of a party prosecuted as in actions qiU tarn under this or other statutes providing for pen- alties. The rule enunciated in Ferrett v. Atwell,^ namely, that construction of penal laws," is uniformly followed. Thus only 2. person can be an informer under the statute. Even the United States, which as a collateral party is interested in a suit to recover penalties under the act to the extent of one half the sum recovered, cannot through its attorney be an informer.^ The form of remedy and the manner in which it must be sought are clearly pointed out by the statute, and must be strictly followed. Un- doubtedly the rule in Ferrett v. Atwell {supra), that the " person" of the statute must be a single person, and cannot be more than one, nor a corporation, although directly applied to an action for penalties under § 4963 of the Revised Statutes of the United States relating to copyrights, would be enforced in a case under the Patent Act should the emergency arise. The action under the statutes is not in contract, nor analogous to contract. No right to any sum of money or to the performance of any obligation vests in the plaintiff or informer until after verdict and judgment, when the money is assumed to be ready for distri- bution between the United States and the informer.^ The fact that the damage or penalty is fixed at a definite sum for each ofi'ence is merely an accident of the statute, so to speak, and does not make the action for such penalty quasi ex contractu.'^ This classification of actions under the statute in question as actions in the nature of tort is of greater importance than in the discussion of actions for penalties under State statutes, for the reason that under the statutes of most if not all of the States special provision is made for the survival of actions sounding in tort after the death of a party thereto, whereas there is no statute 1 I Blatch. 151. 2 United States v. Morris et al., 2 Bond, 23. 8 Twenty-five Thousand Gallons of Distilled Spirits, i Benedict, 367.
 * the language of the statute is to be particularly adhered to in the
 * Chaffee v. United States, 18 Wall. 516, 538.