Case ID: ala_3/html/0024-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "ORMOND, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Cothran et. al. v. Weir.
    ¡1. On appeal from a justice of the peace, the amount of damages laid in the declaration is matter of form, and cannot be looked to to show that the Court had no jurisdiction: that is ascertained by the amount of the recovery.
    Error to the County Court of Cherokee.
    THIS action was commenced before a justice of the peace' by the defendant in error against the plaintiffs in error. The justice rendered judgment for the defendants below, from which the plaintiff appealed to the County Court of Cherokee. In that Court the plaintiff filed his statement, setting forth a special contract, on which he alledged there was due to him forty-nine dollars and fifty-seven cents; also, for work and labor, money paid at their request, &c. and laid his damage at one hundred dollars. The defendants pleaded non assumpsit, and the jury having given a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for twenty dollars, judgment was rendered in his favor for that amount, from which the defendants prosecute this writ of error.
    The only error insisted on is, that the justice had no jurisdiction.
    Moore, for plaintiff in error.
    J. L. Martin, contra.
   ORMOND, J.

It is supposed that the justice of the peace had no jurisdiction in this case, because the damages arc laid in the County Court at one hundred dollars. It is the amount of the recovery, and not the sum claimed, which settles the question of jurisdiction. But the amount claimed, both before the justice and in the County Court, was less than fifty dollars, and the actual recovery is twenty dollars. The assertion of damages in the declaration, is mere matter of form, and cannot be looked to, to ascertain whether the Court have jurisdiotion or not.

Let the judgment be affirmed.