Court Opinion

ID: 9542827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:39:14.475462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:03.939265
License: Public Domain

HERRMANN, Justice
(dissenting).
In my view, as applied to these indigent defendants, 10 Del.C. § 9578(b) violates the Equal Protection Clause. Solely because of their financial inability to furnish a bond .to secure to the plaintiff the collection of the money judgment rendered by the Justice of the Peace, the defendants are deprived of access to a jury trial and the Superior Court to which other defendants, who can afford to post such bond, have access.
The right of appeal here is the right to a trial de novo before a jury as in cases commenced in the Superior Court. Our system does not provide for a jury trial in the courts of justices of the peace; nor does our system provide for appellate review of proceedings in the courts of justices of the peace which are not courts of record. Therefore, the right of appeal to the Superior Court, provided by 10 Del. C. § 9578, furnishes to a defendant in a civil case before a justice of the peace his first and only opportunity for the jury trial guaranteed to him by the State and Federal Constitutions.1 By reason of their financial inability to furnish the bond required by § 9578(b), the defendants in this case are deprived of that right and are exposed to a type of invidious discrimination based upon indigency proscribed by the Equal Protection Clause.
As applied to these indigent defendants, it seems clear to me that § 9578(b) must fall under the rationale of Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956), holding that indigent defendants in criminal cases must be furnished free trial transcripts to permit them to enjoy the same right of appeal as those able to pay for transcripts. There, the United States Supreme Court announced the test that controls the case before us: “There can be no equal justice where the kind of a trial a man gets depends on the money he has.” This principle has grown steadily since Griffin: “Our decisions for more than a decade now have made clear that differences in access to the instruments needed to vindicate legal rights, when based upon the financial situation of the defendant, are repugnant to the Constitution.” Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40, 42, 88 S.Ct. 194, 196, 19 L.Ed.2d 41 (1967). It is unquestionable that those broad constitutional principles apply to civil as well as criminal cases. See Boddie v. Connecticut,2 401 U.S. 371, 91 S.Ct. 780, 28 L.Ed.2d *29(1971) (citing Griffin and holding that a State is barred from denying access to its divorce courts to indigents unable to pay certain court costs); Harrington v. Harrington, Me., 269 A.2d 310 (1970) (holding violative of the equal protection guaranty statutory requirements for bonds in forcible entry and detainer cases); Lee v. Habib, 137 U.S.App.D.C. 403, 424 F.2d 891 (1970) (holding an indigent defendant entitled to a free transcript for use in an appeal from a judgment of eviction); Pasquarella v. Santos (1 Cir.) 416 F.2d 436 (1969) (holding in a rent delinquency case that a poor tenant may remove the case to a federal court without posting the removal bond required by law).
In my judgment, therefore, § 9578(b) is a denial of equal protection as applied to these defendants. Under its provisions, the financial ability to furnish a security bond determines “the kind of trial a man gets.” We may not make judicial processes, including the fundamental right to jury trial, available to some but deny them to others simply because they cannot furnish a bond to secure the ultimate payment of the debt claimed.
The majority opinion distinguishes the Griffin case on the ground that there court costs and expenses were involved; that here a bond to protect a party plaintiff is involved. I cannot agree that the mandate of the Griffin case is absolved by such distinction. The discriminating effect upon the indigent defendant is the same — whether he is deprived of access to jury trial and the Superior Court because he is too poor to pay court costs and the price of a transcript or because he is too poor to post a security bond under § 9578(b). The protective cloak of the Griffin rule and the Equal Protection Clause may not be made to hang upon such distinctionj
The majority opinion also relies upon Alexander v. Hamilton, Ill., (1970). That casé involved a judgment of possession of a house and a Forcible Entry and Detainer Statute requiring an appeal bond to secure the plaintiff from loss or damage “which the plaintiff may sustain by reason of the withholding of the premises in controversy.” The adversaries were defendants who purposely defaulted on their contracts for the purchase of residence properties and plaintiffs who were sellers of the properties for whom judgments of possession were entered by the Circuit Court. There, the Illinois Supreme Court refused to hold the bond requirement a denial of equal protection as applied to indigent defendants. The determinative differences between the Alexander case and the case before us are these: Here, the defendants did not remain in possession of the house and the plaintiff’s property is not exposed to use or damage during the appeal. This was a suit for rent money only, the only purpose of the requisite security bond being to assure to the plaintiff the payment of his claim for rent. It is noteworthy that a successful plaintiff has no such security for payment of a money judgment pending an appeal to and from other courts in this State. Moreover, in *30Alexander, the defendants had their day in the Circuit Court of Illinois, a court of general jurisdiction in which the right to jury trial was undoubtedly preserved. Here, the defendants are denied access to such court.
For the above reasons, I am unable to agree with the majority. I would hold that, as applied to these indigent defendants, 10 Del.C. § 9578(b) denies to them equal protection of the law and the right to jury trial; that, as to them, the .Statute is therefore unconstitutional and void. Accordingly, I would reverse.

. See 10 Del.C. §§ 9577-9582. The Superior Court and the justices of the peace have concurrent jurisdiction in civil actions for the recovery of a debt. The plaintiff herein, therefore, elected to try his case without a jury when he brought his action in the justice of the peace court. The defendant in a civil case, however, has no election of removal to the Superior Court. Thus the appeal route under 10 Del.C. § 9578 is the only access the defendants have to the Superior Court and a jury trial.

. I subscribe to the views recently expressed by Justice Black, Meltzer v. Buck Le Craw & Co., 402 U.S. 954, 91 S.Ct. 1624, 29 L.Ed.2d 124 (1971) as to the ' scope of the Boddie case:
“In my view, the decision in Boddie v. Connecticut can safely rest on only one crucial foundation — that the civil courts of the United States and each of the States belong to the people of this country and that no person can be denied access to those courts, either for a trial or an appeal, because he cannot pay a fee, finance a bond, risk a penalty or afford to hire an attorney.
* * * * *
“In my judgment, the crucial foundation on which Boddie rests also forbids *29denial of an indigent’s right of appeal costs. Once the right to unhampered access to the judicial process has been established, that right is diluted unless the indigent litigant has an opportunity to assert and obtain review of the errors committed at trial. Since Boddie rejected distinctions between the civil and the criminal process in determining the permissibility of restrictions upon access to the courts, we need only apply to civil cases our long line of holdings that indigent criminals cannot because of their indigency be denied an appeal or the right to a state-furnished record on appeal. See Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956); Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487, 83 S.Ct. 774, 9 L.Ed.2d 899 (1963); Long v. District Court of Iowa, 385 U.S. 192, 87 S.Ct. 362, 17 L.Ed.2d 290 (1966); Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 194, 19 L.Ed.2d 41 (1967); Williams v. Oklahoma City, 395 U.S. 458, 89 S.Ct. 1818, 23 L.Ed.2d 440 (1969); all cited with approval in Boddie. See also Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963).”