Opinion ID: 1222695
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Starcher v. Crabtree

Text: In 1986, the constitutionality of the newly enacted statute was challenged in Starcher v. Crabtree, 176 W.Va. 707, 348 S.E.2d 293 (1986), wherein the petitioner claimed the legislation divested the circuit courts of original jurisdiction. This court agreed and found the statute unconditional. Specifically, our reasoning was based on the conclusion that the circuit courts would retain only a limited appellate jurisdiction under the statute. Id. at 708, 348 S.E.2d at 294 [5] and deprived the circuit courts of original jurisdiction. The Starcher case necessitated a special session of the state legislature, held at considerable expense to the taxpayers, [6] to correct the constitutional deficiencies of the FLM system. In Starcher, this Court set forth a brief history of the law relating to jurisdiction of divorce cases: Before West Virginia was a state, the power to grant divorces resided in the Virginia legislature by special enactment. The legislature, however, lost its power to grant divorces when the West Virginia Constitution was ratified. Article 6, Section 39 prohibits the legislature from granting divorces, but states that the legislature shall provide, by general laws, for (divorces). Thus, while the legislature lost the power to grant divorces, it still retained many powers, including the power to choose the forum for divorce. Under the 1872 West Virginia constitution, the legislature could either allow the circuit courts to handle divorces under Article 8, § 12 or form a limited court for that purpose under Article 8, § 19. The legislature allowed both to have concurrent jurisdiction. See W.Va.Code § 48-2-5 (1980). The courts, recognizing the legislature's ability to change forums, acknowledged that neither law courts nor equity courts had the inherent power to dissolve marriages and the authority of a court to decree a divorce was purely statutory. See e.g., syl. pt. 1, State ex rel. Cecil v. Knapp, 143 W.Va. 896, 105 S.E.2d 569 (1958). Courts of limited jurisdiction, however, were abolished by the Judicial Reorganization Amendment of 1974 to the West Virginia Constitution. See W.Va. Const. Art. 8, § 5. The amendment eliminated the legislature's power to change the jurisdiction of divorce cases and constitutionally placed divorce cases in the circuit court. See Patterson v. Patterson, 167 W.Va. 1, 277 S.E.2d 709, 715 (1981). 176 W.Va. at 708-09, 348 S.E.2d at 294-95 (emphasis added). Thus, we concluded that [b]ecause the constitution places the jurisdiction for divorce and other domestic matters in the circuit court, the legislature's efforts to divest this jurisdiction by statute is [sic] unconstitutional and therefore void. Id. at 709, 348 S.E.2d at 295 (footnote omitted). Even the two dissenters in Starcher, Chief Justice Miller and Justice McGraw, in urging that the constitutionality of the statute be upheld, were specific in pointing out that the Court needed to clarify that review by the circuit court should be de novo. Id. at 709 and 713, 348 S.E.2d at 295 and 299 (McGraw, J., dissenting and Miller, C.J., dissenting). With the advent of the new statute, West Virginia Code § 48A-4-20 (Supp.1994), which was passed by the special session as a result of the Starcher case, a circuit court could review the recommended order of a family law master and retain authority to enter an order differing from the recommendation of the family law master if one of the six enumerated requirements is met. [7] In this manner, the divestment of original jurisdiction of the circuit court was corrected. It is now the height of irony that just as the original jurisdiction of the circuit courts was abrogated in the legislation held unconstitutional by this Court in Starcher, the majority's interpretation of the current statute also infringes upon the original jurisdiction of the circuit courts. As aptly explained in State v. Johnson, 100 Utah 316, 114 P.2d 1034 (1941): [o]riginal jurisdiction ... is the right to hear the cause, to make its own determination of the issues from the evidence as submitted directly by the witnesses; or of the law as presented, uninfluenced or unconcerned or limited by any prior determination, or the action of any other court juridically determining the same controversy. Original jurisdiction as here used means the right of the court to make its own record, its own finding and determination. An original determination is one not founded upon one previously made. It is original in the sense that it stands alone upon its own base, not the outgrowth of some other. Id., 114 P.2d at 1037. [8] Accepting the proposition that original jurisdiction implies the authority to make the court's own findings of fact, the narrowing of the standard of review accomplished by the majority severely infringes upon the circuit courts' original jurisdiction. Original jurisdiction is the power to entertain cases in the first instance, as distinguished from appellate jurisdiction. New Times, Inc. v. Arizona Bd. of Regents, 20 Ariz.App. 422, 513 P.2d 960, 964 (1973), vacated on other grounds, 110 Ariz. 367, 519 P.2d 169 (1974). The majority's reconstruction of legislative pronouncement restricts the circuit court scope of review, thereby elevating the jurisdiction and authority of the family law master. Such redistribution of judicial function ventures dangerously close, as Justice Neely [9] points out in his dissent to this opinion, to the unconstitutional creation of a new level of judicial authority. Article VIII, Section 1 of the West Virginia Constitution provides, in pertinent part, as follows: The judicial power of the State shall be vested solely in a supreme court of appeals and in the circuit courts ... and magistrate courts ... and in the justices, judges, and magistrates of such courts. Clearly, it was never the intent of the system that the family law masters enjoy original jurisdiction, but instead they were to make recommendations to circuit courts. It is obvious from Starcher that that is how this Court viewed the function of the masters, and further obvious from the special session of the legislature necessitated by that decision that this is what the legislature intended in its enactments in response to that opinion.