Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/495

 may control them. They are for his benefit. They are the remedy which the law affords him, that he may secure the fruits of his litigation. He may insist that the court shall put forth in his behalf its power to punish for contempt. The proceedings are remedial in their character. In a proper case the suitor has a legal right to an order punishing his opponent for contempt, where the contempt proceedings are of this character. A denial of that right will be reviewed on appeal, and the appellate court will compel the inferor tribunal to give the successful litigant this process to secure the benefits of his victory. Ballston Bank v. Marine Bank, 18 Wis. 490; Livingston v. Swift, 23 How. Pr. 1; Rap. Contempt, § 149; Wyatt v. Magee, 3 Ala. 94.

But the proceeding culminating in the order appealed from in this case was not instituted to give to the party who had obtained the injunction, damages because of the disobedience of such injunction under the advice of the appellant. Nor could such a contempt proceeding be here instituted. We have no statute authorizing it, and it was unknown to the common law. Neither was the order made as a means of securing to the suitor the benefit of his injunction. The order merely imposed a fine to be paid to the clerk of the court, and directed that appellant stand committed until it was paid. The act restrained had been done, and could not be undone. No amount of imprisonment could result in an obedience to the injunctional order. It was beyond the power of the party enjoined to refrain from voting the stock, for the stock had been already voted by him, and the act was irrevocable. The person in whose favor the injunctional order had been made could not, therefore, insist that the appellant be punished, either to indemnify the former or to compel an observance of the injunctional order. He had no right to insist that contempt proceedings be instituted as his legal remedy for the wrong done. , Their only possible scope and object was the vindication of the court’s authority. A contempt proceeding, when instituted for this purpose is not a “remedy,” as that word is used in defining a special proceeding. Perhaps it might be proper, in common parlance, to speak of such a proceeding as the remedy of the state to compel respect for its authority as lodged in its courts. But it is not such a