Page:Pennington's Executors v. Yell.pdf/18

Rh ''vs. Hutcherson, 2 Chipm. 117. Huntington vs. Rummill, 3 Day R. 390.''

It seems to be now generally conceded in this country that the authority of an attorney at law over his client's cause continues not only until the judgment and a year and a day afterwards, as is said in the old books; but if the judgment be not satisfied and is continued in force, that his authority will be prolonged accordingly. How this change in the law has been wrought, it is not important to inquire; doubtless, however, by a gradual process, not unlike that by which the custom of merchants was interwoven into the law. (Tucker Lec., B. 3, p. 46. 2 Greenl. Ev., 2 ed., sec. 141, p. 134, and 145, p. 144.) When first brought into court, these customs were matters of fact, and merchants were examined to prove them: afterwards, when legal decisions had been made upon them, parties and courts took notice of them without being specially stated; and thus they became a part of the law of the land, and doubtless it was in reference to this process that Lord Mansfield remarked, in Edie et al. vs. East India Comp., (2 Burr. 1222,) that "he was wrong in having permitted merchants to give evidence of a custom on which there had been such legal decision."

As authority and duty, in the relation of client and attorney, are correlative terms, in the same sense that right and obligation are so, in a general sense, it results from the law, as it now stands, that, when an attorney undertakes the collection of a debt, it becomes his duty to sue out all process, both mesne and final, necessary to effect that object; and consequently that he must not only sue out the first process of execution, but all such that may become necessary. This undoubtedly is the true general doctrine on this subject qualified however, as will be presently seen by a pervading principle that fairly grows out of the peculiar character of the attorney's functions. But although it is his duty thus to pursue his client's cause through all its stages, he is not imperiously bound to institute new collateral suits without special instructions to do so,—as actions against the sheriff or clerk for the