466 MURDOCK'S CASE.—2 BLA^D.

his answer, fully deny or justify the acts charged against him, he
may be fined and imprisoned, or such terms imposed upon him as
the justice of the case may require. Childrens v. Saxby, 1 Vern.
207; Angerstein v. Hunt, 6 Ves. 488.

In this instance Gilbert Murdock has, in the most complete and
positive manner, denied all the charges made against himself, and
the other two persons, who stand accused, sustain his answer by
their assertion that they did not act as his agents, or with his
knowledge. This is ati injunction intended to do the office of a
writ of estripment; as to which it is laid down, that if a stranger,
of his own wrong, do waste, after the prohibition delivered unto
the tenant, and against the tenant's will, then the tenant shall
not be punished for that waste. F. N. B. 141. Hence, it is clear,
that this tenant, Gilbert Murdock, must be discharged with his
costs.

But William Murdock and Johnson admit that they did the act
complained of, and that they have no claim whatever to the place
where they erected the fence. They must, then, by their own ad-
mission, be considered as trespassers, who undertook, at their
peril, to meddle with property to which they had no manner of
title; and as such they may justly be held responsible, in every
way, for all the consequences of their unauthorized act.

It is, in general, true, that this process of attachment for con-
tempt, in violating an injunction, can be directed against no one
but a defendant to the injunction bill, or one who acts as an agent,
or by some concert with a defendant; and it is also certain, that
this Court can have no concern with any action at common law,
which may be brought against these trespassers. But that very
act which these persons have done, this Court, by its injunction,
prohibited the defendant himself, as a claimant of the property,
from doing, until the right should be determined between him and
this plaintiff. It is evident, therefore, that these trespassers have
altered that state of things which this Court had determined should
remain unchanged; they have benefited the defendant by doing
that which he himself was not allowed to do; they have injured
the plaintiff in doing that which he had complained of as a wrong;
and they have, without a shadow of right, impertinently inter -
meddled with a matter which is the subject of a controversy
488 depending in this Court. Had they acted under a claim
of title other than that of the defendant, their conduct, so far as
regards this proceeding, must have been considered as entirely
justified. Their ignorance of the act committed by them having
been prohibited by an injunction of this Court, and of its having
an injurious bearing upon the matter in litigation in this suit,
may be heard in mitigation of the wrong; but it cannot be deemed
a justification of their conduct. A pragmatic trespasser subjects
himself to all the consequences of his acts, as well in an action at