Court Opinion

ID: 9851150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:08:08.190396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:49.864942
License: Public Domain

Bussey, Justice
(dissenting).
The most interesting and historically informative majority opinion in this case does not convince me that the Court has reached the right result and I, therefore, most respectfully dissent.
The Laurens County Civil and Family Court, from whence comes this appeal, is, of course, an inferior court of limited jurisdiction and, aside from any constitutional question, I am unconvinced that this court has the jurisdiction to determine the disputed paternity of an illegitimate child. In the fairly recent case of McCullough v. McCullough, 242 S. C. 108, 130 S. E. (2d) 77 (1963), we quoted with approval the following from 14 Am. Jur. 369, Courts, Section 169:
“Courts created by statute and not by the Constitution are tribunals of special and limited jurisdiction only. They can exercise only such powers as are directly conferred on them *219by legislative enactment and such as may be incidentally necessary to the execution of those powers. Therefore, unless authority for the exercise of jurisdiction in a given case can be found in the statutes, given either expressly or by necessary implication, their proceedings are void; for the rule is that such a court can only take cognisance of such matters as are clearly within its jurisdiction.” (Emphasis added.)
In McCullough we also quoted from Brown v. Wood, 1 Bailey 457, with respect to the jurisdiction of courts of limited and particular jurisdiction, the following:
“They are strictly confined to the powers given. * * * Such courts must not assume constructive powers, i. e. powers not literally given * *
The foregoing principles were also approved in the recent case of Richland County Department of Public Welfare v. Mickens, 246 S. C. 113, 142 S. E. (2d) 737 (1965).
There is nothing in the statutes creating and empowering the particular court which expressly or literally vests in that court jurisdiction to hear and determine the disputed paternity of an admittedly illegitimate child. If it has such jurisdiction, it arises by virtue of necessary implication. The court was clearly given the power to determine, without the intervention of a jury, matters within its jurisdiction. It was given the power to compel the support of an illegitimate child, but it does not follow, I think, as a necessary implication that it was given the power to determine the disputed issue of paternity. In the present state of our law the mother, under some circumstances, as well as the established or admitted father of an illegitimate child may be compelled to support it. There are, of course, many cases in which paternity is admitted and cases wherein paternity has been previously judicially established. I do not have any available statistics for the State of South Carolina, but it is interesting to note that in the year 1965, in the City of Philadelphia, 83% of 2,034 defendants admitted paternity *220of illegitimate children. See foot note to Commonwealth v. Dillworth, 431 Pa. 479, 246 A. (2d) 859 (1968).
In any event, it is obvious that there is a wide field in which the power and jurisdiction to compel support of an illegitimate child may be exercised when no disputed issue of paternity is involved. In the case of Richland County Department of Public Welfare v. Mickens, supra, it was contended that the granting of jurisdiction of adoption proceedings by necessary implication carried with it the power and jurisdiction to terminate parental rights in a separate statutory proceeding. Such contention was rejected by this court and I am of the view that our decision there is analogous to the present situation.
Section 15-1095.37(3) vests the court with the same jurisdiction as the circuit courts “to determine the legitimacy of children.” I concede for the sake of argument that the power “to determine legitimacy” by necessary implication implies the power to determine “illegitimacy”. The statute, however, makes no mention whatever of any power to determine the paternity of an illegitimate child. A determination that a child is “legitimate” of necessity involves a finding of paternity on the part of a married father who is already presumed to be the father. In the case of an admittedly illegitimate child, there is no presumption as to legitimacy or as to who the father is. For these reasons, I conclude that the power to determine “legitimacy” of a child does not expressly or by any necessary implication confer the power to determine the disputed paternity of an illegitimate child.
If the legislature, perchance, intended to give inferior courts of limited jurisdiction, such as the one here, jurisdiction to determine the disputed paternity of an illegitimate child, without a jury, such intention on its part is certainly not clearly shown, either by any express words or otherwise. As a general rule, statutes which tend to infringe on the right to a trial by jury ought to be strictly construed *221against infringement, and liberally construed in the preservation of such right. See Commonwealth v. Dillworth, 431 Pa. 479, 246 A. (2d) 859, and various cases collected in West’s Seventh Decennial Digest, Jury, Key No. 31(1).
For all of the foregoing reasons, I would, accordingly, hold that the particular court here was without statutory power or jurisdiction to try, without a jury, the disputed issue of paternity.
It is elementary, as a general rule, that we should refrain from deciding constitutional issues unless necessary to a proper disposition of the cause. In the instant case, the record fails to reflect that any constitutional question was presented to the court below. It is doubtful that appellant’s single exception raises, even by implication, any constitutional question. Appellant argues no constitutional question in his brief. Constitutional issues are, however, argued in the brief of the respondent and are dealt with in the majority opinion. Under my view of the statutory law, we would not necessarily reach a constitutional question. If, however, the court lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter, by virtue of either insufficiency of the statutory law to grant jurisdiction or by virtue of a constitutional inhibition, it is appropriate for this court, in the ends of justice, to take notice of such lack of jurisdiction ex mero motu. McCullough v. McCullough, supra, and cases therein cited.
It is my considered view that by virtue of Article I, Sec. 25 of the Constitution the court lacked jurisdiction to determine the issue of disputed paternity without the benefit of a jury. Article I, Sec. 25 of the Constitution is as follows:
“Trial by jury. — The right of trial by jury shall be preserved inviolate.”
While the instant proceeding is ostensibly a civil one, the foregoing section of the Constitution applies to both civil and criminal cases. Best v. Barnwell County, 114 S. C. 123, 103 S. E. 479 (1920). With respect to this constitutional *222provision, the court in State v. Gibbes, 109 S. C. 135, 95 S. E. 346 (1918), had the following to say:
“A similar guaranty will be found in every Constitution adopted by the people of this state. But such provisions have been uniformly held by this court and others to mean that the right shall be preserved only in those cases in which the parties were entitled to it under the law or practice existing at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.”
There are many, many cases which could be cited in which the court has stated and applied the foregoing principles and held that the right to trial by jury either was or was not preserved, dependent upon the state of the law at the time of the adoption of the particular constitutional provision. There are two cases, however, which in my view should shed clear light on the true rule, its origin, logic and application.
In White v. Kendrick, 1 Brev. 469 (1805), an act of the General Assembly, extending the jurisdiction of justices of the peace to thirty dollars, was adjudged to be unconstitutional under a provision of the Constitution of 1790, which is the progenitor of Article I, Sec. 25 of the 1895 Constitution. It appears that in a case involving as much as thirty dollars, trial by jury was demandable as a matter of right when the 1790 Constitution was adopted, and in holding the act unconstitutional, the court had the following to say,
“The constitution, in the clause alluded to, has established ■an epoch, from which legislative innovation on the trial by jury shall cease. * * * * At the time of the adoption of our constitution, the trial by jury was amongst the most valuable possessions of the citizen. It was the mode, which the wisdom of successive ages had adopted, to determine the rights of individuals, either to life, or property.”
The court then went on to mention various exceptions to the right to trial by jury existing and well known at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. With respect to such, the court then said,
*223“They are, however, exceptions which were familiarly known at the adoption of our constitution, and were intended to be as inviolably preserved in that instrument, as the rule itself. None others existed and none others could have been intended.”
In the case of State ex rel. Kohne v. Simons, 2 Speers 761 (1844), an act of the legislature provided for the forfeiture of slaves, under certain circumstances, by a tribunal composed of two magistrates and five freeholders. Under this act such a tribunal sought to work the forfeiture of the slave of a Mrs. Kohne. The act was held to be unconstitutional and I quote the following from the opinion of the court,
“And the words ‘the trial by jury, as heretofore used in this State, shall be forever inviolably preserved,’ mean that in all cases where it had not been previously abandoned, it should be continued to every freeman, and of course to every woman and child: they being embraced in the larger general terms used. * * * *- hence follows that the Act of 1835, having undertaken to clothe a forum with the power of depriving Mrs. Kohne of her property, which is not sustained by the law, existing at the adoption of the constitution, and which does not proceed by the common law mode of trial by jury, is so far unconstitutional and void; and that, therefore, the whole of the proceedings under the Act of 1835 are illegal.”
Under both the law and practice existing at the time the Constitution of 1895 was adopted, the only means for determining the disputed issue of the paternity of an illegitipate child was by a jury trial in the Court of General Sessions. Such law and practice had existed in this State for one hundred years. Constitutional provisions guaranteeing the right of trial by jury are addressed to the preservation of substance rather than form, the object being to preserve the substantive right rather than to describe the details of the method by which it shall be exercised and enjoyed. See 47 Am. Jur. (2d) 640, Jury, Sec. 18. It matters not at all, *224I think, that the instant proceeding is a civil one or that Code Sections 20-305 through 20-309 have been recently repealed. The substance of the right here involved is that no putative father of an illegitimate child who denied his paternity could, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, be compelled to support such illegitimate child in absence of a finding of paternity by a jury.
The cases of Smeido v. Jansons, 23 A. D. (2d) 796, 259 N. Y. S. (2d) 169, and Commonwealth ex rel. Miller v. Dillworth, 204 Pa. Super. 420, 205 A. (2d) 111, are to my mind not at all persuasive on the constitutional issue. In the Smeido case we have the benefit of only a memorandum opinion of an intermediate appellate court in which an order of the Family Court was affirmed for the reasons stated in such order, which was not published in connection with the memorandum opinion. Since the preparation of the majority opinion, it has come to the attention of this court that the decision of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in Miller v. Dillworth, relied on in the majority opinion, has been subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in Commonwealth v. Dillworth, 431 Pa. 479, 246 A. (2d) 859, albeit not strictly on the constitutional issue.
For all of the foregoing reasons, I conclude that under the presently existing law of this State a proceeding under Section 20-303 of the Code, with a jury trial, is the only available means for the determination of the disputed issue of the paternity of an illegitimate child, and that the court below was without jurisdiction to try the issue. To summarize, it is my conclusion that the statutory law did not vest the court with such jurisdiction, but that if the statutory law be construed as vesting the court with such jurisdiction, then to that extent the statutory law is in clear violation of Article I, Sec. 25 of the Constitution. I would, accordingly, reverse.