Case ID: tenn_15/html/0475-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Green J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

White and Browning vs. Davenport and White.
    Where a justice of the peace dies or resigns,'the process to be issued by the clerk on a judgment rendered by such justice, must be made returnable to the clerk of the county court, and not to the county court.
    A scire facias issued by the clerk of the county court to revive a judgment rendered by a justice of the peace who has died or resigned, if made returnable to the county court, confers no jurisdiction on such court.
    The defendants in error recovered a judgment against the plaintiffs in error, before a justice of the peace. The justice having resigned, returned his official papers into the office of the county court clerk of Giles county. The clerk of the court issued a scire facias on this judgment against the plaintiffs in error to revive the same, and made the scire facias returnable to the county court, and not before himself. This scire facias being made known to the defendants therein, they appeared and moved to quash the same, which motion the county court sustained, and quashed the scire facias. From this judgment the plaintiffs in the scire facias appealed in error to the circuit court, where the judgment of the county court was reversed, and judgment given for the plaintiffs in the scire facias, from which judgment of the circuit court, the defendants in the scire facias, prosecuted an appeal in the nature of a writ of error, to this court.
    Rivers, for plaintiffs in error.
    
      J. W. Combs, for defendants in error.
   Green J.

delivered the opinion of.the court.

By the act of 1809 ch. 27 sec. 2, it is enacted, that if a justice of the peace shall die, resign or remove out of the county, his public papers shall be filed with the clerk of the county court of the county within which he was a justice. By the act of 1811 ch. 87, the clerk in whose office the public papers of any justice who may have died or resigned, shall be deposited, is required to issue an execution upon any unsatisfied judgment of the justice, “returnable before him” in the same “manner as if issued by the justice.” By the act of 1825 ch. 23 sec. 1, the clerk in such case is authorized to issue execution to any county in the State, and by the 2d section, it is made the duty of the officer into whose hands such execution shall come, to return the same to the clerk within forty days from the time he may have received it.

These acts plainly show that the papers of a justice, who may have died or resigned, are not considered as appertaining to the county court; and that consequently, process issued upon the judgments of a justice by the clerk of the county court, is not to be made returnable to the court, but in the language of the acts of 1811 and 1825, is to be returned to the clerk. The scire facias in this case having been made returnable to the county court, and requiring the defendants to appear there and answer, gave that court no jurisdiction to proceed in the cause, and for that reason the judgment of the circuit court must be reversed. It is therefore unnecessary to discuss any other question raised in the record.

Judgment-reversed.