Court Opinion

ID: 9545071
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:05:30.941849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:02.079098
License: Public Domain

AREND, Justice
(dissenting).
I cannot agree with the opinion of the majority for two principal reasons. In the first place, I feel strongly that neither this court nor the superior court has jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the district magistrate court in a civil action in which the sum in controversy is less than $50, as .it was in this case.
Article IV, section 1, of the state constitution declares that “[t]he jurisdiction of courts shall be prescribed by law.” To execute this provision of the constitution, the legislature in 1959 provided, inter alia, and in the order following: (1) that appeals to the supreme court shall be a matter of right;1 (2) that the superior court has jurisdiction in all matters appealed to it from a subordinate court or an administrative agency when appeal is provided by law, such appeals being a matter of right;2 and (3) that either party may appeal a judgment of the district magistrate in a civil action to the superior court when the sum in controversy is not less than $50 exclusive of costs.3
I believe that these provisions of the constitution and the statutes make sense only if they are considered together and in the order of their appearance. So considered, they lead me to conclude that an appeal from a judgment of the district magistrate court is a matter of right only if the sum in controversy is not less than $50 exclusive of costs.4
The fact that a constitutional question-— freedom of speech and the press — was raised by the appellant did not give the reviewing courts jurisdiction to hear the appeal in the absence of an express constitutional or statutory exception to the monetary limitation fixed by our statute on appeals from the magistrate court.5 By this I do not mean to imply that the city’s action was not an abridgement of the appellant’s constitutional rights.
*835While the appellee has not challenged the jurisdiction of the reviewing courts to hear the appeal from the magistrate court, I reiterate what I said in my dissenting opinion in Turkington v. City of Kache-mak,6 that the issue of jurisdiction is one of which the courts must take cognizance on their own motion as a self limitation.7
The second reason for my disagreement with the opinion of the majority is this: Even if there had been jurisdiction in the reviewing courts to hear this appeal, the district magistrate court erred in granting relief on its own theory that the appellant had committed a trespass on the city’s telephone poles, which entitled the city to reimbursement for restoring the poles to their original status.
The city waived whatever right it may have had to sue in trespass and issue was joined in assumpsit and thereafter expressly tried on that issue alone. Through all stages of the proceedings, including the two appeals, the city never wavered from its position that it was entitled to recover on the theory of implied contract, and that was the only theory against which the appellant was ever called upon to defend.
I recognize that Civ.R. IS (b) provides in part as follows:
“When issues not raised by the pleadings are tried by express or implied consent of the parties, they shall be treated in all respects as if they had been raised in the pleadings. Such amendment of the pleadings as may be necessary to cause them to conform to the evidence and to raise these issues may be made upon motion of any party at any time, even after judgment; but failure so to amend does not affect the result of the trial of these issues. * * * ”
But nowhere in the record of this case have I been able to find any indication that the parties expressly or impliedly consented that the action should be tried on the theory of trespass. In fact,- the city in its brief insists that the only question presented on this appeal is whether an Alaskan municipal corporation can avail itself of the common law rule which permits a plaintiff to waive a tort action for trespass and bring an action in assumpsit to recover actual damages.
I conclude that, if the issue were properly before this court, it should hold that the district magistrate erred in changing the theory of the case of his own accord when it came time for him to render his decision and that the superior court committed reversible error in affirming the magistrate court’s award of damages for a tort committed against the city.

.SLA 1959, ch. 50, sec. 1 [AS 22.05.010].

. SLA 1959, ch. 50, sec. 17(1), (2) [AS 22.10.020(a)].

. SLA 1959, ch. 184, sec. 20(1) [AS 22.15.240(a)].

. See Decker v. Williams, 73 P. 308 (D. Alaska 1896).

. See Colliery Engineer Co. v. American Car & Foundry Co., 157 Ind. 111, 60 N.E. 941 (1901) ; Thomas v. Chicago, B. & Q. *835R. Co., 127 Kan. 326, 273 P. 451, 453, 64 A.L.R.. 322 (1929); Broadwell v. Commonwealth, 98 Ky. 15, 32 S.W. 141 (1895); Miller v. Bopp, 136 La. 788, 67 So. 831 (1915) ; Baer v. Gore, 79 W.Va. 50, 90 S.E. 530, 531, L.R.A.1917B, 723 (1916).

. Opinion No. 141, 380 P.2d 593, 597 (1963).

. Under a federal statute (28 U.S.C.A. § 41 I'D) denying jurisdiction to district courts where the matter in controversy did not exceed the sum or value of $3,000, the United States Supreme Court raised the jurisdictional question on its own motion, found that the jurisdictional amount had not been established as to a number of the plaintiffs, and reversed the case as to them with instructions to the district court to dismiss the case as to such plaintiffs for want of jurisdiction. Clark v. Paul Gray, Inc., 306 U.S. 583, 588-590, 59 S.Ct. 744, 83 L.Ed. 1001, 1007-1008 (1939).