Case ID: njl_9/html/0279-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

James Hunt vs. Thomas Langstroth.
    CERTIORABI.
    
    1. An affidavit taken before one justice cannot be read to prove tire service of a notice in a canse pending before another justice.
    2. A notice of an application to reinstate an action should be written and not verbal.
    Langstrotli sued Hunt before a justice of the peace. After the warrant was returned, the cause was adjourned to a future day. On the adjourned day the defendant appeared, and.the plaintiff failing to appear, the defendant insisted that the suit ought to be dismissed, and the justice accordingly dismissed it. On a subsequent day the plaintiff made application to the justice to have the action reinstated, and having laid before him a copy of a notice of the application, together with an affidavit taken before a justice of another county, proving the service on the defendant of the notice of the said application, and presented satisfactory reasons for his non-attendance on the adjourned day, the justice, in the absence of the defendant, reinstated the action, tried it in the absence of the defendant, and rendered a judgment against him.
    To reverse this judgment Hunt brought this certiorari.
    
      D. Croxall, for the plaintiff,
    relied - upon the following reasons for reversal:
    *224] *1. Because the service of the notice of the application to reinstate the action was not sufficiently proved, inasmuch as the affidavit of the service of such notice was taken before another justice of the peace than the one before whom the cause was pending.
    2. Because the justice had no right, after dismissing the action, to reinstate it.
    
      Hamilton, contra, insisted—
    1. That the proof of service of the notice of the application to reinstate the action was sufficient.
    2. That the defendant, Hunt, had actual notice of the intended application to reinstate the cause, for the counsel of the plaintiff below had met Hunt in the street on the day previous to the application, and informed him of his intention to make such application, and of the time and place of making the same.
    
      
       This case was decided in May te‘nn, but was omitted to be published among the cases of that term.
    
   By the Court.

The state of facts in this case is that the defendant ¡was brought before the justice upon a warrant, and an adjournment took place. The defendant attended on the adjourned day; the plaintiff did not. The justice dismissed the action, and afterwards reinstated it. Without giving any opinion as to the right of the justice to reinstate the action, yet clearly he ought not to have done so until it had been shewn that notice of the application had been given to the defendant. The affidavit- taken before another justice was mere blank paper. It was voluntary, and perjury could not be assigned upon it.

The verbal notice mentioned by the defendant’s counsel, was not legal notice.

Judgment reversed.