Case ID: mass_10/html/0185-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      The Court\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Commonwealth versus Thomas L. Winthrop.
    The Courts of Sessions are m possession of the records of the Common Pleas whicn relate to subjects within the jurisdiction of the Sessions, and which were for a time cognizable by the Common Pleas.
    This was a writ of certiorari, which had issued, at the motion of the respondent, to the chief justice of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas for the circuit comprehending this and Somerset counties, commanding him to certify the proceedings of the former Court of Common Pleas for said county of Somerset, relative to the assessment of a certain tax assessed by the last-mentioned court, after the jurisdiction of the Sessions had been transferred to it by the statute of 1809, c. 17, upon certain lands in said county not within the bounds of any incorporated town or district, for the purpose of repairing a certain highway passing through the said lands, pursuant to the statute of 1796, c. 58, ■§> 2, 3.
    The writ being returned, with a copy of the proceedings referred to, Williams, of counsel for the respondent, suggested to the Court sundry errors in the proceedings.
    * Wilde, for the commonwealth,
    moved the Court to [ * 178 ] quash the writ, and, as the ground of his motion, contended that it had issued to a wrong officer. The power of assess "ng these taxes was originally in the Sessions, by the statute of 1796. It was, with the other powers and duties of that court, transferred to the several Courts of Common Pleas for the respective counties by the statute of 1809. When the statute of 1811, c. 33, abolished the last-mentioned courts, and established in their stead the present Circuit Courts, it transferred to the new courts the jurisdiction of civil and criminal suits, but with the exception of such acts, matters, and things, as were or might be cognizable by the Courts of Sessions; and afterwards, by the statute of 1811, c. 81, the Courts of Sessions were revived, and their former jurisdiction restored to them, as it had been limited and restrained by the statute of 1803, c. 155, including, however, the powers exercised by the Common Pleas of Somerset in the proceedings brought into question by the certiorari in this case. The records of the Courts of Common Pleas were transferred, with their jurisdiction, to the revived Courts of Sessions. The writ should have been, therefore, directed to the presiding member of the Court of Sessions for Somerset county, and not to the chief justice of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas.
    
      Williams thought this an immaterial circumstance,
    since the same individual is by law clerk of all the judicial courts in the county, and on him devolves the duty of making out the proceedings required, whatever officer may subscribe the formal return. Besides, it is now manifest to the Court, by the return of this writ, that the record sought is in possession of the Circuit Court. As it is now before the Court, from what source soever it may have been obtained, it may with propriety be heard and acted upon.
   The Court

quashed the certiorari, as having issued improvidently, and ordered a new writ to issue to the first justice of the Court of Sessions for the county of Somerset.