Case ID: miss_62/html/0075-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Campbell, C. J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

W. J. Kiernan v. Louisa Germaine.
    Appeal. Amount in controversy. Statutory damages.
    
    Tlie statutory damages allowed where the plaintiff recovers a judgment in the circuit court upon the defendant’s appeal from a justice of the peace’s court cannot he reckoned so as to make the amount in controversy sufficient to give this court jurisdiction of an appeal.
    Motion in Supreme Court.
    Louisa Germaine brought this action against W. J. Kiernan upon an open account for fifty-two dollars before a justice of the peace in Lauderdale County. The defendant filed a set-off for thirty-six dollars. On the 3d of May, 1882, the justice of the peace rendered a judgment in favor of the plaintiff for twenty-five dollars and ninety-five cents. The defendant appealed to the circuit court, where the plaintiff, on the 5th day of July, 1884, recovered a judgment for forty-seven dollars, “ together with statutory damages as allowed in such case.” From this judgment the defendant prayed for and obtained an appeal to this court.
    In this court the appellee made a motion to dismiss the appeal, on the ground that the suit “ having originated before a justice of the peace and the amount in controversy being less than fifty dollars, this court has no jurisdiction, and the appeal should not have been granted.”
    
      J. P. Walker, for the motion.
    
      Whitaker & Bell, contra.
    
   Campbell, C. J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

It is settled that unless the amount in controversy, exclusive of interest, exceeds fifty dollars an appeal does not lie to this court in a case begun before a justice of the peace (Davis v. Holberg, 59 Miss. 362); and it must follow that the damages given by statute as an incident to a recovery in the circuit court against a defendant who is appellant are to be excluded in determining the sufficiency of the amount in controversy to entitle the party to an appeal to this court.

Motion sustained.