MURDOCK'S CASE. 487

proofs and affidavits have been allowed to be introduced in oppo-
sition to the answer of the accused. If, on the other hand, the
accused does not, by 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, (k)

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 an 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. (I) 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 benefitted 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 de-

(fc) Childrens v. Saxby, 1 Vern. 207; Angerstein v. Hunt, 6 Ves, 488.—(I) F,
N. B. 141.