Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/88686/capital-traction-co-vs-hof
Timestamp: 2019-09-22 14:36:14
Document Index: 43067685

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8', '§ 9', '§ 13', '§ 17', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 5', '§ 1', '§ 11']

Capital Traction Co Vs Hof - Citation 88686 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Capital Traction Co. Vs. Hof - Court Judgment
LegalCrystal Citation legalcrystal.com/88686
Case Number 174 U.S. 1
Appellant Capital Traction Co.
Respondent Hof
capital traction co. v. hof - 174 u.s. 1 (1899) u.s. supreme court capital traction co. v. hof, 174 u.s. 1 (1899) capital traction co. v. hof no. 108 argued january 5-6, 1899 decided april 11, 1899 174 u.s. 1 error to the court of appeals of the district of columbia syllabus this court has jurisdiction to review by writ of error, under the act of february 9, 1893, c. 74, § 8, a judgment of the court of appeals of the district of columbia maintaining the validity of proceedings for a trial by a jury before a justice of peace which were sought to be set aside on the ground that the act of congress authorizing such a trial was unconstitutional. the provisions of the constitution of the united states securing the.....
Capital Traction Co. v. Hof - 174 U.S. 1 (1899)
U.S. Supreme Court Capital Traction Co. v. Hof, 174 U.S. 1 (1899)
By the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, when a trial by jury has been had in an action at law in a court either of the United States or of a state, the facts there tried and decided cannot be reexamined in any court of the United States otherwise than according to the rules of the common law of England -- that is to say, upon a new trial, either granted by the court in which the first trial was had or to which the record was returnable, or ordered by an appellate court for error in law.
On September 8, 1896, the Capital Traction Company, a street railway corporation in the District of Columbia, presented to the Supreme Court of the District a petition for a writ of certiorari to a justice of the peace, to prevent a civil
The petition further averred that the only method in which Hof's claim against the petitioner could be tried by a jury according to the common law and the constitution was by removing his suit from the justice of the peace into the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia; that if this was not done, the petitioner would be deprived of its constitutional right to a trial by jury, and would be in danger of being deprived of its property without due process of law, and would
The petition for a writ of certiorari presents for determination a serious and important question of the validity, as well as the interpretation and effect, of the legislation of congress conferring upon justices of the peace in the District of Columbia jurisdiction in civil actions in which the matter in dispute exceeds twenty dollars in value, and providing for a trial by a jury before the justice of the peace, an appeal from his judgment to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and a trial by jury at the request of either party in the appellate court. This Court therefore has jurisdiction of the writ of error. Railroad Co. v. Hopkins,
Page 174 U. S. 5
130 U. S. 210 , 130 U. S. 224 ; Parsons v. District of Columbia, 170 U. S. 45 .
I. The Congress of the United States, being empowered by the Constitution "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the seat of the national government, has the entire control over the District of Columbia for every purpose of government -- national or local. It may exercise within the District all legislative powers that the legislature of a state might exercise within the state, and may vest and distribute the judicial authority in and among courts and magistrates, and regulate judicial proceedings before them, as it may think fit so long as it does not contravene any provision of the Constitution of the United States. Kendall v. United States, (1838), 12 Pet. 524, 37 U. S. 619 ; Mattingly v. District of Columbia (1878), 97 U. S. 687 , 97 U. S. 690 ; Gibbons v. District of Columbia (1886), 116 U. S. 404 , 116 U. S. 407 .
It is beyond doubt at the present day that the provisions of the Constitution of the United States securing the right of trial by jury, whether in civil or in criminal cases, are applicable to the District of Columbia. Webster v. Reid (1850), 11 How. 437, 52 U. S. 460 ; Callan v. Wilson (1888), 127 U. S. 540 , 127 U. S. 550 ; Thompson v. Utah (1898), 170 U. S. 343 .
The decision of this case mainly turns upon the scope and effect of the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. It may therefore be convenient, before particularly examining the acts of Congress now in question, to
Mr. Hamilton, in No. 81 of the Federalist, when discussing the clause of the Constitution which confers upon this Court "appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make," and again, in more detail, in No. 83, when answering the objection to the want of any provision securing trial by jury in civil actions, stated the diversity then existing in the laws of the different states regarding appeals and jury trials, and especially pointed out that, in the New England states, and in those alone, appeals were allowed as of course from one jury to another until there had been two verdicts on one side, and in no other state but Georgia was there any
A comparison of the language of the Seventh Amendment, as finally made part of the Constitution of the United States, with the Declaration of Rights of 1774, with the Ordinance
In Parsons v. Bedford (1830), 3 Pet. 433, this Court, on writ of error to a lower court of the United States, held that
Id., 28 U. S. 446 -448.
This last statement has been often reaffirmed by this Court. Barreda v. Silsbee (1858), 21 How. 146, 62 U. S. 166 ; Justices v. Murray (1869), 9 Wall. 274, 76 U. S. 277 ; Miller v. Life Insurance Co. (1870), 12 Wall. 285, 79 U. S. 300 ; Insurance Co. v. Comstock (1872), 16 Wall. 258, 83 U. S. 269 ; Insurance Co. v. Folsom (1873), 18 Wall. 237, 85 U. S. 249 ; Railroad Co. v. Fraloff (1879), 100 U. S. 24 , 100 U. S. 34 ; Lincoln v. Power (1894), 151 U. S. 436 , 151 U. S. 438 ; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago (1897), 166 U. S. 226 , 166 U. S. 246 .
The Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, c. 20, drawn by Senator (afterwards Chief Justice) Ellsworth, and passed -- within six months after the organization of the government under the Constitution, and on the day before the first ten
amendments were proposed to the legislatures of the states -- by the first Congress, in which were many eminent men who had been members of the convention which formed the Constitution, has always been considered as a contemporaneous exposition of the highest authority. Cohens v. Virginia (1821), 6 Wheat. 264, 19 U. S. 420 ; Parsons v. Bedford, above cited; Bors v. Preston (1884), 111 U. S. 252 , 111 U. S. 256 ; Ames v. Kansas (1884), 111 U. S. 449 , 111 U. S. 463 -464; Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co. (1888), 127 U. S. 265 , 127 U. S. 297 . That act provided, in §§ 9 and 12, that the trial of issues of fact in a district or circuit court, in all suits, except those of equity or admiralty jurisdiction, should be by jury; in § 13, that the trial of issues of fact in this Court, in the exercise of its original jurisdiction, in all actions at law against citizens of the United States, should be by jury; in § 17, that "all the said courts of the United States" should
The only instances that have come to our notice in which Congress has undertaken to authorize a second trial by jury to be had in a court of the United States, while the verdict of a jury upon a former trial in a court of record has not been set aside, are to be found in two temporary acts passed during the last war with Great Britain, and in an act passed during the war of the Rebellion, and continued in force for a short time afterwards, each of which provided that certain actions brought in a state court against officers or persons acting under the authority of the United States might, after final judgment, be removed by appeal or writ of error to the
In Justices v. Murray, an action was brought by Patrie against Murray, a United States marshal, and his deputy, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff were rendered in that court. The defendant sued out a writ of error from the circuit court of the United States under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1863, c. 81, § 5, and moved the state court to stay proceedings. The state court denied the motion and refused to make a return to the writ of error upon the ground that the act of Congress, so far as it provided that a case, after verdict and judgment in a state court, might be removed to the circuit court of the United States for trial and determination upon both the facts and the law, in the same manner as if the case had been originally commenced in that court, was in violation of the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and for that reason null and void. Patrie v. Murray, 43 Barb. 323. Thereupon the circuit court of the United States, without expressing any opinion upon this point, granted a writ of mandamus to the clerk of the state court.
The ratio decidendi, the line of thought pervading and controlling the whole opinion, was that the Seventh Amendment undoubtedly prohibited any court of the United States from reexamining facts once tried by a jury in a lower court of the United States, and that there was no reason why the prohibition should not equally apply to a case brought into a court of the United States from a state court. "In both instances," it was said, "the cases are to be disposed of by the same system of laws, and by the same judicial tribunal." 9 Wall. 76 U. S. 277 -279.
In Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago, 166 U. S. 226 , 166 U. S. 242 -244, the same course of reasoning was followed,
The case of enforcing in a court of the United States a statute of a state giving one new trial, as of right, in an action of ejectment is quite exceptional, and such a statute does not enlarge, but restricts, the rules of the common law as to reexamining facts once tried by a jury; for by the common law, a party was not concluded by a single verdict and judgment in ejectment, but might bring as many successive ejectments as he pleased, unless restrained by a court of equity after repeated verdicts against him. Bac.Abr. "Ejectment," I; Equator Co. v. Hall (1882), 106 U. S. 86 ; Smale v. Mitchell (1892), 143 U. S. 99 .
III. "Trial by jury," in the primary and usual sense of the term at the common law and in the American Constitutions, is not merely a trial by a jury of twelve men before an officer vested with authority to cause them to be summoned and impaneled, to administer oaths to them and to the constable in charge, and to enter judgment and issue execution on their verdict; but it is a trial by a jury of twelve men in the presence and under the superintendence of a judge empowered to
Vicksburg &c.; Railroad v. Putnam (1886), 118 U. S. 545 , 118 U. S. 553 . And again:
United States v. Philadelphia & Reading Railroad (1887), 123 U. S. 113 , 123 U. S. 114 . And see Sparf v. United States, (1895), 156 U. S. 51 , 156 U. S. 102 , 156 U. S. 106 ; Thompson v. Utah (1898), 170 U. S. 343 , 170 U. S. 350 ; Cooley, Const.Law, 239.
IV. By the common law, justices of the peace had some criminal jurisdiction, but no jurisdiction whatever of suits between man and man. There were in England, however, courts baron, county courts, courts of conscience, and other petty courts, which were not courts of record, and whose proceedings varied in many respects from the course of the common law, but which were empowered to hear and determine in a summary way, without a jury, personal actions in which the debt or damages demanded did not exceed forty
Justices of the peace in the District of Columbia, in the exercise of the jurisdiction conferred upon them by Congress to try and determine cases, criminal or civil, are doubtless in some sense judicial officers. Wise v. Withers, 3 Cranch 330, 7 U. S. 336 . But they are not inferior courts of the United States, for the Constitution requires judges of all such courts to be appointed during good behavior. Nor are they in any sense courts of record. They were never considered in Maryland as "courts of law." Weikel v. Cate (1882), 58 Md. 105, 110. The statutes of Maryland of 1715, c. 12, and of 1763, c. 21 (in Bacon's Laws of Maryland), and of 1791, c. 68 (in
The question considered and decided by this Court in Callan v. Wilson (1888), 127 U. S. 540 , though somewhat analogous, was essentially a different one. That case was a criminal case, not affected by the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution, but depending upon the effect of those other provisions of the original Constitution and of the fifth and sixth amendments, which declare that "the trial of all causes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury," that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," and that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury." The point there decided was that a person accused of a conspiracy to prevent another person from pursuing his lawful calling, and by intimidations and molestations to reduce him to beggary, had the right to a trial by
The declaration of rights, prefixed to the Constitution of Maryland of 1776, declared in article 3 that "the inhabitants of Maryland are entitled to the common law of England, and the trial by jury according to the course of that law," and in article 21 repeated the words of Magna Charta -- "No person ought to be taken or imprisoned," etc., "or deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." 1 Charters and Constitutions 817, 818. The statute of the State of Maryland of 1793 (chapter 30) incorporating a bank in the District of Columbia provided that on any bill or note made or indorsed to the bank and expressly made negotiable at the bank and not paid when due, or within 10 days after demand, the bank, upon filing an affidavit of its president to the sum due, might obtain
2 Kilty's Laws. The General Court of Maryland, in 1799, held that this statute did not infringe the constitutional right of trial by jury. Bank of Columbia v. Ross, 4 Her. & McH. 456, 464-465. The statute was continued in force in the District of Columbia by the Acts of Congress of February 27, 1801, c. 15, § 5, and March 3, 1801, c. 24, § 5, 2 Stat. 106, 115; Bank v. Okely (1819), 4 Wheat. 235, 17 U. S. 246 .
4 Wheat. 17 U. S. 243 -244.
7 Pet. 32 U. S. 552 .
While, as has been seen, the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States requires that "the right of trial by jury shall be preserved" in the courts of the United States in every action at law in which the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars, and forbids any fact once tried by a jury to "be otherwise reexamined, in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law" (meaning
But the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that the statute of 1794 was a constitutional
The Constitution of Tennessee of 1796 declared that "the right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate." 2 Charters and
Morford v. Barnes (1835)
The Act of Congress of February 27, 1801, c. 15, in § 1, enacted that the laws in force in the State of Maryland as they then existed should be and continue in force in that part of the District which had been ceded by that state to the United States, which, since the retrocession of the County of Alexandria to the State of Virginia by the Act of Congress of July 9, 1846, c. 35, 9 Stat. 35, is the whole of the District of Columbia, and, in § 11, provided for the appointment of "such number of discreet persons to be justices of the peace" in the District of Columbia as the President should think expedient,
Sections 3 and 4 of the act of Congress of 1823 made it the duty of every justice of the peace to keep a docket containing
"SEC. 16. If any of the persons so summoned and returned as jurors shall not appear, or be challenged and set aside, the justice before whom said cause is to be tried shall direct the constable to summon and return forthwith a tales, each of whom shall be subject to the same exceptions as the jurors aforesaid, so as to make up the number of twelve, after all causes of challenge are disposed of by the justice, and the said twelve persons shall be the jury who shall try the cause, each of whom shall be sworn by the justice well and truly to try the matter in difference between the parties, and a true verdict to give, according to evidence, and the said jury, being sworn, shall sit together and hear the proofs and allegations of the parties, in public, and when the same is gone through with, the justice shall administer to the constable the following lowing oath, viz.: "
These sections, providing for a trial by a jury before the justice of the peace, would appear, from their position in the act, to have been added, by an afterthought, to the scheme of the earlier sections, derived from the legislation of Maryland,
and providing for a trial without any jury before a justice of the peace, and for a trial by jury, if demanded by either party, in an appellate court, and were evidently taken, in great part verbatim, from the twelfth section of the statute of New York of 1801, c. 165 (which gave justices of the peace jurisdiction of actions in which the debt or damages did not exceed twenty-five dollars), as modified by the twenty-second section of the statute of New York of 1818, c. 94, which extended their civil jurisdiction to fifty dollars. The material parts of both those statutes are copied, for convenience of comparison, in the margin. [ Footnote 1 ]
The New York statute of 1818, however, like the Act of Congress of 1823, extended the civil jurisdiction of a justice
By a familiar canon of interpretation heretofore applied by this Court whenever Congress, in legislating for the District of Columbia, has borrowed from the statutes of a state provisions which had received in that state a known and settled construction before their enactment by Congress, that construction must be deemed to have been adopted by Congress together with the text which it expounded, and the provisions must be construed as they were understood at the time in the state. Metropolitan Railroad v. Moore (1887), 121 U. S. 558 , 121 U. S. 572 ; Willis v. Eastern Trust Co. (1898), 169 U. S. 295 , 169 U. S. 307 -308.
In all acts of Congress regulating judicial proceedings, the very word "appeal," unless restricted by the context, indicates that the facts, as well as the law, involved in the judgment below, may be reviewed in the appellate court. Wiscart v. Dauchy (1796), 3 Dall. 321, 327 [argument of counsel -- omitted]; In re Neagle (1890), 135 U. S. 1 , 135 U. S. 42 ; Dower v. Richards (1894), 151 U. S. 658 , 151 U. S. 663 -664.
But a trial by a jury before a justice of the peace, pursuant to sections 15 and 16 of the act was of quite a different character. Congress, in regulating this matter, might doubtless allow cases within the original jurisdiction of a justice of the peace to be tried and decided in the first instance by any specified number of persons in his presence. But such persons, even if required to be twelve in number and called a "jury," were rather in the nature of special commissioners or referees. A justice of the peace, having no other powers than those conferred by Congress on such an officer in the District of Columbia, was not, properly speaking, a judge, or his tribunal a court -- least of all a court of record. The proceedings before him were not according to the course of the common law. His authority was created and defined by, and
The decisions in question would appear, by the brief notes
of them in the reports of Chief Justice Cranch to have proceeded upon the assumption that the trial before a justice of the peace by a jury impaneled pursuant to the Act of 1823, was a trial by jury, within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, and therefore the facts could not be tried anew upon appeal. In Smith v. Chase, however, that learned judge (declaring that he spoke for himself only) delivered an elaborate opinion in which he maintained the position that, upon the demand of a trial by a jury, the cause was taken entirely out of the hands of the justice of the peace; that he was obliged to summon and swear the jury, and to render judgment according to their verdict; that no authority was given him to instruct the jury upon matter of law or of fact or to set aside their verdict and grant a new trial, and that the jury were not bound by his opinion upon matter of law, but were to decide the law as well as the fact. 3 Cranch C.C. 351, 352. From these premises, he inferred (by what train of reasoning does not clearly appear) that such a trial by a jury before the justice of the peace was a trial by jury within the meaning of the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, that the facts so tried therefore could not be tried anew in an appellate court, and that no appeal lay in such a case. Curiously enough, that opinion, purporting to have been delivered at December term, 1828, refers to the opinion of this Court in Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 446, 28 U. S. 448 , which was not delivered until January term, 1830.
The foregoing decisions of the circuit court were followed in the Supreme Court of the District at general term in 1873, without much discussion, in Fitzgerald v. Leisman, 3 McArthur 6, and at special term in 1896, by Justice Bradley, in Brightwood Railway v. O'Neal, 24 Wash.Law Rep. 406, and by Justice Cox in the present case. Traction
Apart from the inconsistencies in the opinions delivered in the courts of the District of Columbia, it is quite clear that the decisions of those courts, especially when they involve questions of the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States and of the constitutionality and effect of acts of Congress, cannot be considered as establishing the law or as relieving this Court from the responsibility of exercising its own judgment. Ex Parte Wilson (1885), 114 U. S. 417 , 114 U. S. 425 ; Andrews v. Hovey (1888), 124 U. S. 694 , 124 U. S. 717 ; The J. E. Rumbell (1893) 148 U. S. 1 , 148 U. S. 17 .
Under the act of 1895, as under the previous acts of Congress, where the matter in controversy exceeds five dollars in value, an appeal lies to a court of record from any judgment
Legislation increasing the civil jurisdiction of justices of the peace to two or three hundred dollars, and requiring each appellant from the judgment of a justice of the peace to a court of record, in which a trial by jury may be had for the first time, to give security for the payment of the judgment of the court appealed to, has not generally been considered as unreasonably obstructing the right of trial by jury, as is shown by the numerous statutes cited in the margin, [ Footnote 2 ]
The legislature, in distributing the judicial power between courts of record, on the one hand, and justices of the peace or other subordinate magistrates, on the other, with a view to prevent unnecessary delay and unreasonable expense, must have a considerable discretion whenever, in its opinion, because
10. Upon the whole matter, our conclusion is that Congress, in the exercise of its general and exclusive power of legislation over the District of Columbia, may provide for the trial of civil causes of moderate amount by a justice of the peace, or, in his presence, by a jury of twelve, or of any less number, allowing to either party, where the value in controversy exceeds twenty dollars, the right to appeal from the judgment of the justice of the peace to a court of record, and to have a trial by jury in that court; that Congress, in every case where the value in controversy exceeds five dollars, has authorized either party o appeal from the judgment of the justice of the peace, although entered upon the verdict of a jury, to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and to have a trial by jury in that court; that the trial by a jury of twelve, as permitted by Congress to be had before a justice of the peace, is not, and the trial by jury in the appellate court is, a trial by jury, within the meaning of the common law and of the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution; that therefore the trial of facts by a jury before the justice of the peace does not prevent those facts from being reexamined by a jury in the appellate court; that the right of trial by jury in the appellate court is not unduly obstructed by the provisions enlarging the civil jurisdiction of justices of the peace to three hundred dollars, and requiring every appellant to give security to pay and satisfy the judgment of the appellate court; that the legislation of Congress upon the subject is in all respects consistent
"And after the said jury have taken the oath aforesaid, they shall sit together, and hear the several proofs and allegations of the parties, which shall be delivered in public in their presence. [Provision is then made for the form of oath to be administered to witnesses.] And after hearing the proofs and allegations, the jury shall be kept together in some convenient place until they all agree upon a verdict, and for which purpose a constable shall be sworn, and to whom the said justice shall administer the following oath, viz., "