Property/Res/Corpus

A Treaty On Suits In Chancery By: Henry R. Gibson

§ 56. To Protect and’ Enforce Rights to Property the Object of Suits in Chancery.—The term “property,” as used in this section, includes everything that is the subject of exclusive individual ownership; or, to be more specific, includes not only lands, houses, goods and chattels, rights and credits, but, also, a man’s person, and his wife and minor children, and his right to work, and to sell and acquire property, and engage in any lawful business, and his and their reputation, health and capacity to labor, and his and their right to enjoy the senses of sight, smell, hearing and taste, and his and their right of speech and iocomotion, and his and their right to enjoy their sense of moral propriety when normal.

As men live by their labor and property, no man is presumed to part with either without receiving or expecting an equivalent in value. Hence, when- ever one person has obtained either the labor or proprty of another he should pay or account therefor, unless he can prove it was a gift; and so, whatever injury one person does to another’s property or capacity to labor should be made good.

To declare and define the rights of property, and regulate its tenure, posses- sion, enjoyment and transfer, is the business of the Legislature; and to protect and enforce those rights, compel atonement for their violation, and conform the tenure, possession, enjoyment and transfer of property to the requirements of law and Equity, so that each person may have his own, and no person have what is another’s, is the business of the Courts.

Questions involving partisan politics, denominational religion, ecclesiastical controversies, scientific theories, mere breaches of moral rectitude and viola- tions of criminal law, are not within the domain of Equity Jurisprudence, and the Chancery Court has no jurisdiction of them, unless they involve rights of property, and then only as to such rights.