PENSIONS. When money resulting from pensions becomes subject to garnishment: See extended note to Rozelle v. Rhodes, 2 Am. St. Rep. 596598. Under the Colorado statute, pension money received from the United States government cannot be seized under execution, attachment, or be taken for any debt under judicial process: Laws of 1887, p. 352.

EQUITY-LACHES.

POWERS'S APPEAL.

[125 PENNSYLVANIA STATE, 175.]

COURTS OF EQUITY HAVE NOT ADOPTED the maxim of the common law, that wherever there is a right there is a remedy for its infraction. And if a party looks on and remains silent until large sums have been expended or important intervening interests have grown up, the fact that he might have successfully objected at the outset will not avail him.

EQUITY INJUNCTION. — PARTY MUST NOT ONLY APPEAR IN COURT OF EQUITY WITH CLEAN HANDS, but he must come with reasonable prompt. ness, in good faith, and with a just and equitable demand. And if an injunction is prayed for where, upon a consideration of the whole case, it ought not in good conscience to issue, a mere legal right in the plaintiff will not move the chancellor.

EQUITY RIGHT LOST BY LACHES.—IT IS TOO LATE FOR PROPERTY OWNERS INJURED by the erection of an addition to a boom, in which, and in business enterprises depending upon it, thousands of dollars have been invested, to assert, after an acquiescence therein for fourteen years, that the boom company had no right, under its charter, to build the addition in the way it was built.

DEFINITIONS. A BOOM IS AN INCLOSURE OR ARTIFICIAL HARBOR for logs and lumber, of which one side is furnished ordinarily by the natural bank of the stream, and the other is provided by the piers and the tim bers or other obstruction to the passage of logs which connect them together.

STATUTES-CONSTRUCTION AS TO EXTENT OF AUTHORITY. - An act authorizing the construction of a boom on the south side of a stream is authority to use the shore on that side as part of the inclosure, and to erect, in connection therewith, the piers necessary to complete the inclosure on the other side.

BILL in equity to compel the defendant, the Bald Eagle Boom Company, to remove certain booms from the Bald Eagle Creek, to restrain forever the erection and maintenance of like illegal structures by the defendant, and to prevent the unobstructed flow of the waters of said creek in the ancient channel thereof. Other facts appear in the opinion. The bill was dismissed, and the plaintiffs assigned error.

Seymour D. Ball, for the appellants.

W. C. Kress and Charles Corss, for the appellee.

WILLIAMS, J. The maxim of the common law, that wherever there is a right there is a remedy for its infraction, has never been adopted by courts of equity. A party whose right is clear may sleep upon it until his demand becomes stale. He may look on while valuable structures are erected, when he might successfully object, and remain silent until large sums have been expended or important intervening interests have grown up. In such cases the fact that he might have objected at the outset will not avail him. A suitor must not only appear in a court of equity with clean hands, but he must come with reasonable promptness, in good faith, and with a just and equitable demand; otherwise, the conscience of the chancellor will not be moved. If an injunction is prayed for where, upon a consideration of the whole case, it ought not in good conscience to issue, a mere legal right in the plaintiff will not move the chancellor.

An application of these well-settled principles of equity jurisdiction to the plaintiffs' case is fatal to it. The Bald Eagle Boom Company was incorporated in 1859. Its boom was constructed soon after. In 1868 and 1869 the addition to the boom complained of by the plaintiffs was built, and a sheer-boom hung to turn the logs from the north shore of the stream into the main structure. The boom as extended has been in constant use since 1869. It is in an important sense a public improvement, in the maintenance and use of which the lumbermen and owners of timber-lands on the Bald Eagle Creek and its tributaries are interested. Thousands of dollars have been invested in it and in mills that are made accessible by it, and many millions of feet of timber are annually caught in it and rafted out to be manufactured at the mills in Lock Haven and other places down the stream. During all this time the plaintiffs have not been heard to object to the work of construction, but have applied for and secured an assessment of their damages on account thereof; and on one or more occasions since have recovered damages resulting from an overflow of their land when the boom was filled with logs.

The plaintiffs now assert that the boom company had no right to build the piers of the extension of the boom where they were built in 1869, and ask that the corporation be "restrained by injunction from continuing and maintaining their booms erected in said creek, and forever hereafter from the erection and maintenance of like illegal structures in the same."

This denial of the right of the boom company, coming after 60 many years of acquiescence, after the boom has become a necessity to the mills that have grown up in its neighborhood, and after the damages sustained by the plaintiffs in consequence of the construction of both the original boom and the enlargement in 1869 have been assessed at their instance, and paid by the boom company, comes too late to be conscionable. There is no equity in the plaintiffs' case, and the court below would have been fully justified in dismissing the bill for that reason. But if we turn now to the question of construction presented by the first and second assignments of error, the plaintiffs are equally without solid ground on which to stand.

The act of 1859 authorized the Bald Eagle Boom Company to "erect and maintain on the south side of Bald Eagle Creek such boom or booms with piers as may be necessary for the purpose of stopping and securing logs, masts, and spars or other lumber floating upon said creek, and such piers, sidebranches, or shore-booms as may be necessary for that purpose," with a proviso that the boom should be so constructed as "not to impede the navigation of said creek or the branches thereof." The plaintiffs insist that the words "on the south side of Bald Eagle Creek" require the boom company to build on the south side of the middle line of the creek, or at most to include only the south half of the stream. But what is a boom? It is an inclosure or artificial harbor for logs and lumber, of which one side is furnished ordinarily by the natural bank of the stream, and the other is provided by the piers and the timbers or other obstruction to the passage of logs which connect them together. An act authorizing the construction of a boom on the south side of a stream is authority to use the shore on that side as part of the inclosure, and to erect, in connection therewith, the piers necessary to complete the inclosure on the other side.

Where these shall be located may be settled by the statute by words of direction, as "to be built along the middle of the stream," or "not to approach the opposite shore nearer than one hundred feet," or other expression indicating the purpose of the legislature to confine the exercise of the power granted to certain definite limits. In the act before us, the only limitation is found in the proviso which declares that the piers shall be so built as "not to interfere with the navigation of the said creek or its branches." The boom is to be so built that the south shore shall be occupied for that side of the inclosure.

The open channel for navigation is to be on the north side, and is to be sufficient for the purposes of navigation. Subject to the restriction in the proviso, the boom company may so locate their piers as to enable them to meet the purposes for which their incorporation was intended.

It follows from what has now been said that the ruling complained of in the third assignment was entirely proper, so far at least as this case is concerned.

The plaintiffs' remedy is not in equity, but at law. Whether that remedy is under the act of incorporation, or whether, upon the facts of this case, an action can be maintained, is not before us, and we are quite willing to wait until it is presented before expressing an opinion upon it.

The decree of the court below is affirmed, at the costs of the appellants.

In Pennsylvania R. R. Co.'s Appeal, 125 Pa. St. 189, one Mullin filed a bill in equity against said company, praying that the defendant might be enjoined from conveying the waters of a stream off a certain tract of land and from using the same excepting on and for the use of said tract, and for damages for the injury, etc. On an appeal from the decree of the court below awarding an injunction, it was held that as the plaintiff had stood by for seven years without taking any legal steps to prevent the defendant from diverting the water, and had allowed the defendant to expend large sums in that behalf, the plaintiff was guilty of undue laches, and had lost his right to an injunction, especially as his injury could be compensated in damages. In the opinion, Green, J., observes: "We think this was undue laches, and that it would be very oppressive to interfere by injunction at this late day, the more especially as the plaintiff's injury is entirely susceptible of compensation, and he has asked for that relief in his bill. It has been many times held that long delay, and sometimes a delay of even less than six years, will be regarded as laches sufficient to stay the intervention of equity"; citing Ashhurst's Appeal, 60 Pa. St. 317; Evans's Appeal, 81 Id. 278; Russell v. Baughman, 94 Id. 400; Todd's Appeal, 24 Id. 429; Neely's Appeal, 85 Id. 387; Rennyson v. Rozell, 106 Id. 407.

BOOM COMPANIES ARE QUASI PUBLIC CORPORATIONS intended to supply facilities to the general public for driving logs: West Branch Boom Co. v. Lumber and Land Co., 121 Pa. St. 143; 6 Am. St. Rep. 766.

LACHES.- Equity may and often does refuse relief on account of the laches of complainant: Reynolds v. Sumner, 126 Ill. 58; 9 Am. St. Rep. 523, and note 530, 531; Irish v. Antioch College, 126 Ill. 474; 9 Am. St. Rep. 638, and note 642; Wright v. Fisher, 65 Mich. 279; 8 Am. St. Rep. 886; Bausman v. Kelley, 38 Minn. 197; 8 Am. St. Rep. 661; Bell v. Hudson, 73 Cal. 285; 2 Am. St. Rep. 791, and extended note 795-808; note to Burns v. Allen, 2 Id. 860; Walet v. Haskins, 68 Tex. 418; 2 Am. St. Rep. 501, and note 505; note to McCord v. Pike, 2 Id. 104, 105; Bangs v. Stephenson, 63 Mich. 661; Tevis v. Armstrong, 71 Tex. 59, and cases therein cited and approved; Land Co. v. Chisholm, 71 Id. 523.

EVANS V. CLEARY.

[125 PENNSYLVANIA STATE, 204.]

MARRIED WOMEN- FOREIGN ATTACHMENT. — PENNSYLVANIA ACT OF 1848, SECURING TO MARRIED WOMEN the ownership and enjoyment of their separate property, but subjecting it to seizure for debts contracted by them for necessaries after marriage, is comprehensive enough in its provisions to embrace legacies and distributive shares due to married women, and subject them to seizure by foreign attachment.

MARRIED WOMEN CONFLICT OF LAWS. WHERE JUDGMENT IS RECOVERED AGAINST MARRIED WOMAN IN ACTION ON CONTRACT made by her in a state under the laws of which a recovery may be had thereon against her alone, without her husband being joined, such judgment may be enforced in a proceeding against her in Pennsylvania, without joining the husband as a co-defendant, although at the time the proceeding was instituted such joinder was necessary under the laws of the latter state. In all matters relating to the remedy merely, the lex fori prevails, but the liability of a party to a contract depends on the lex loci contractus. EVIDENCE. WHERE PLAINTIFF'S CAUSE OF ACTION IS BASED UPON TRANSCRIPT OF RECORD OF JUDGMENT rendered by a justice of the peace in another state, duly certified as prescribed by the statute of the state where action is brought, such transcript is evidence prima facie of what appears upon its face, namely, that the defendant's liability upon a contract debt has been merged in a judgment. STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS - CONFLICT OF LAWS.

- In the absence of proof

of a statute of a foreign state, putting a judgment obtained there before a justice of the peace upon the same footing with ordinary simple contract debts as to the statute of limitations, the law of such foreign state will be presumed to be the same as that of Pennsylvania, and an action in the latter state on the transcript of the judgment will not be barred at the end of six years from the entry of judgment.

WRIT of foreign attachment in debt, issued by P. Cleary against T. B. Evans and Mary A. Evans, his wife with whom he joined J. J. Pinkerton and others, executors of John Todd, deceased, to attach a legacy held by said executors for Mary A. Evans under the will of John Todd, her father. The cause of action was a transcript of the judgment of a justice of the peace of the state of Illinois. Other facts appear in the opinion. The verdict was for the plaintiff, and judgment being entered thereon, the defendant assigned error.

Abraham Wanger, for the plaintiff in error.

H. H. Gilkyson, for the defendant in error.

WILLIAMS, J. The claim of the plaintiff is for necessaries furnished to Mary A. Evans, who was then and still is a married woman. She was domiciled in Chicago, in the state of Illinois, where she contracted for the goods with Cleary, a grocer of the same city. The statutes of Illinois provide that