Court Opinion

ID: 9864909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:16:28.253343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:34.126330
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Hilliard
dissenting.
Since, as the court opinion states, defendants were residents of a precinct other than the one in which they were sued, and that the cause did not accrue in the precinct of action, defendants, as I think, rightly ignored the summons of the justice and thereby brought themselves within the doctrine of Walker v. People ex rel., 87 Colo. 178, 285 Pac. 1104, and the right to invoke it, *294as they did, precisely, as the learned trial judge determined. By any other course, however, they might have tried to save the point by a limited appearance, defendants would have subjected themselves to the hazard of waiver, as the cases cited in the court opinion abundantly substantiate.
On the theory of the present opinion, and regardless of how far distant he resided, a citizen is subject to being sued before any justice of the peace into whose precinct he legitimately happens to enter, and, unless he goes to the trouble and expense of challenging the jurisdiction of the justice before the justice himself, and risks waiver, the writ that was conceived in his interest, and hitherto enjoyed by parties thus sued, is to be denied him.
The defendants here, struggling small-farm owners remote from Canon City, where they were sued, are conspicuous examples of the potential hardships which I have endeavored to emphasize.