Between 1819 and 1844, JS participated in
approximately seventy-eight civil lawsuits in , , ,
, , and
. His roles in these cases varied. He brought
twenty of the cases as the plaintiff and acted as the defendant in
forty-eight others. He was subpoenaed to testify in seven cases, and
in three more he was a third party who was indirectly interested in
the outcome. Most of JS’s civil suits dealt with financial matters.
His experience with civil litigation was shaped by changing economic
conditions in the . Prior to the
eighteenth century, most economic transactions involved oral
promises between neighbors. But as the economy expanded, informal
transactions between local acquaintances were largely replaced by
financial agreements with distant strangers, mediated through
promissory notes and other written instruments in which the debtor
promised to repay the creditor within a certain time or on
demand. When debtors
failed to comply with the stipulations of the note, creditors hired
attorneys to collect or renegotiate the debt. When necessary,
creditors also brought litigation against negligent debtors, which
was often a costly and lengthy process.
The size of the debt determined which court a suit was
brought in. Twenty-six of JS’s civil suits
were heard before , the lowest
tier in the state court system, who were authorized to hear disputes
for up to one hundred dollars. Seven of these were
subsequently appealed or otherwise elevated to a higher court. Nearly all of the remaining
suits dealt with larger unpaid debts or sought significant damages
for wrongs committed. These cases were initiated in county-level
courts, which in , , and were known as courts of common pleas and in
and were called circuit
courts. One suit was brought by federal officials in a
United States District Court in , Illinois.
JS’s earliest exposure to a civil
lawsuit occurred in 1819, when his father and older brother— and —sued a , New York, neighbor, , for selling them
unsound horses. The Smiths won the suit before a justice of the
peace, in part based on the teenage JS’s testimony. Hurlbut appealed
to the , New York,
Court of Common Pleas, where a default judgment was rendered against
the Smiths after they failed to appear. Eleven years later JS
borrowed $190.95 from a , Pennsylvania, merchant, in part to complete the
purchase of property from his father-in-law, . As JS was preparing to leave , his creditor initiated an “amicable action”
against JS—the first civil suit in which he was a party—to ensure
payment through the courts. JS agreed to this measure and repaid the
debt the following year.
Financial growth in nineteenth-century America was usually
accomplished by first going into debt, as few individuals could
raise adequate funds for ambitious projects. During the 1830s,
church members sought to build in and a of Zion in ,
a collective endeavor that required substantial resources. While the
church sought to implement consecration and tithing to raise funds
internally, over time church leaders realized that fulfilling divine
mandates—including building a —would require additional
sources of capital.
In their efforts to build Zion, in the mid-1830s JS and other church leaders formed
multiple firms or partnerships that operated mercantile stores in
and , Ohio. The firms purchased thousands of dollars
in inventory from wholesale merchants in on credit, using promissory notes assuring repayment
in the future, usually three to six months later. Church leaders
hoped to make the required payments by selling the goods they had
purchased. In
November 1836 church leaders also established a community bank, the
, in an
effort to strengthen the local economy. The society was funded in
part by stockholders and in part by loans in the form of promissory
notes from other financial institutions. By January 1837, JS and
other church leaders had been unable to get a state charter for the
Kirtland Safety Society, so they decided to restructure it as an
unchartered banking company.
A nationwide economic downturn in 1837 dashed the
Latter-day Saints’ financial ambitions. During the ensuing financial crisis,
creditors across the
turned to the courts to collect debts and thereby “created an untold
volume of litigation.” When the -area firms failed to pay their promissory notes
to merchants on time, those in possession of the notes
hired lawyers to pursue debt litigation in the local courts, which
resulted in JS being named as a defendant in
dozens of suits. As a plaintiff, JS
sought to collect small debts on behalf of the firms before Kirtland
justices of the peace. In
addition, civil proceedings were brought against JS and others based
on an statute that banned unchartered banks. In early 1838, JS relocated from Ohio
to , but he authorized agents to settle his debts
and answer remaining lawsuits in Ohio.
Another major financial transaction that led to
subsequent litigation occurred in September 1840, when JS and other church leaders
purchased a steamboat from the federal government for $4,866.38
using a promissory note. They intended to use the boat to ferry
church members as well as transport goods for a fee on the . After operating
for only about a month, the steamboat crashed on a sandbar and was
severely damaged. The loss of the boat resulted in multiple lawsuits
in the 1840s, as JS and the other signatories attempted to recoup
their losses and in turn were sued for unfulfilled obligations. In 1842, the
cumulative weight of the church’s debts incurred in his name, or
subsequently assumed by him, led JS to avail himself of a recently
passed federal bankruptcy bill. In response,
federal officials in 1842 sued JS and the other signatories on the
1840 note to collect payment for the steamboat, resulting in a
default judgment against them.
Several civil suits resulted from confrontations
between JS and his antagonists. Some of
these stemmed from the 1838 conflict between the Latter-day Saints
and their opponents in . Others developed out of
conflicts between JS and dissenters in , Illinois, in
late 1843 and early 1844. At the May 1844 term of the , Illinois,
circuit court, JS’s critics sought to overwhelm him with litigation,
bringing six civil suits against him. Most of these suits, which
targeted JS in his capacity as mayor and judge in Nauvoo, were still
pending at his death on 27 June 1844.
JS’s record in these suits was
mixed. Of the twenty suits that JS brought as the plaintiff, he
prevailed in nine cases and lost one suit
outright; the
remaining ten were dismissed. Of the forty-eight
cases in which he was the defendant, he lost twenty-nine and the remaining nineteen were either
dismissed or not litigated. In all, civil litigation accounted for
more than 40 percent of the approximately 190 cases JS was involved
in.