WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1859
259
defendants, Mr. Jacob Mussina. The evident position of mat- ters, and the reports of the committees on the subject, from which I have read, show that Mussina was without any power to enforce his rights, and without any chance to obtain them in the determination of this case in Judge Watrous's court. He then applied for redress to the courts of his domicile in Louis- iana; and finding the parties there who were accused in the committee's report referred to, as having colluded in the Cava- zos suit, and as having "defrauded and betrayed him," he sued them for the collusion and frauds they had practiced to his prejudice, in Judge Watrous's court, and otherwise. This suit was commenced on the 1st ·of November, 1851; it was tried in May, 1853; and a verdict was rendered in favor of Mussina by a jury of his countrymen for the land claimed, or $214,000 in lieu thereof, and $25,00 as damages. In January, 1854, a rule was taken at Galveston, Texas, upon Jacob Mussina, a citizen of Louisiana, and he was cited to appear before Judge Watrous at Galveston, to answer for con- tempt of court in instituting the suit in New Orleans, in dis- obedience to the decree which he had rendered in the Cavazos case, although the fact was that the suit referred to was com- menced two months before the rendition of the decree, which proceeding the House Judiciary Committee of the Thirty-fourth Congress have characterized in a deliberate, unanimous report, as "irregular, unjust, and illegal, and, taken in connection with the previous proceedings and rendition of the decree, oppressive and tyrannical." And this opinion was indorsed by a portion of the present Judiciary-Committee of the House, from whose report I read the following e_xpression of judgment: "It also seems clear, when the pleadings in the suit instituted by Mussina against Stillman, Belden & Alling, and Basse & Hord, 0 in the fourth district court of New Orleans, are considered, together with the judgment rendered in it upon the verdict of a jury, and the evi- dence in the contempt case, that there was no founda- tion whatever for the proceeding against him for a contempt, and that the action of the judge with respect to it was unauthorized by law, and was intended to be vexatious . and oppressive. How any other conclu- sion can be arrived at, when it is remembered that the suit in New Orleans was instituted by Mussina against his co-defendants alone and their counsel, and related to rights growing out of their own transactions, it is not easy to conceive."
Powered by FlippingBook