Walker v. Dreville
Opinion
having stated the case in the way above given, delivered the opinion of the court.
Tire pleading, the orders, and the decree of the court, show, we think, so as to need no further argument to a mind familiar with the principles of equity jurisprudence, that the procedure is in its essential nature a foreclosure of a mortgage in chancery. It has all the essential qualities of such a suit, and it has none which is not usual and appropriate in such a proceeding. It is true that there is a personal judgment against defendant, but the niuety-second rule of equity practice prescribed by this court clearly authorizes such a judgment in foreclosure cases. It is the precise mode of foreclosing mortgages adopted in many of the States under their codes, and in all of them, when there is r separate chancery docket, such proceedings are classed among the chancery causes.
We have so often decided that notwithstanding the peculiarities of the Civil Code of Louisiana, the distinctions between law and equity must be preserved in the Federal courts, and that equity causes from that circuit must come here by appeal, and common law causes by writ of error, that we'cannot now depart from that rule without overruling numerous decisions and a well-settled course of practice. *
*443 The present case being a proceeding in equity brought here by writ of error, and not by appeal, the writ roust be
.Dismissed. .
San Pedro, 2 Wheaton, 132; McCollum v. Eager, 2 Howard, 61; Minor v. Tillotson, Ib. 392; Surgett v. Lapice, 8 Id. 48; Brewster v. Wakefield, 22 Id. 118; Thompson v. Railroad Companies, 6 Wallace, 134.
Reference
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- 1. Notwithstanding the peculiarities of the Civil Code of Louisiana, the distinctions between law and equity must be preserved in the Federal courts in that State; and equity causes can only be brought to the Supreme Court for review by appeal, and cases at law by writ of error. 2. As the pleadings in the Circuit Court -for that district arc by petition and answer, both at law and in equity, the court must- look at the essential nature of the proceeding to determine whether it belongs to the one or to the other. 3. A proceeding which is in its essential nature a foreclosure of a mortgage as a mortgage is foreclosed in a court of chancery, is a suit in equity, by whatever name it may be called; and when brought here by writ of error, the writ must be dismissed.