Court Opinion

ID: 9519908
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:27:23.614442+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:19.733607
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE THOMAS J. MORAN, dissenting: The majority holds that once a court obtains subject matter jurisdiction, unrestricted by statute, it has unlimited jurisdiction. It reasons that under this unlimited jurisdiction, any order entered erroneously is voidable, not void. The opinion states that the error of severing the issues of liability and damages did not deprive the court of its power to hear the instant case. I agree. The question is, however, whether the subject matter jurisdiction gave the court the additional power to change the manner in which the case was to be tried and, if not, was the court’s order void or voidable. Subject matter jurisdiction relates to the power of the court to conduct a hearing in a particular type of case and to adjudicate issues raised by the pleadings within such case. Contrary to the statement in the opinion, “* * * the phrase ‘jurisdiction of the subject matter’ has come to be the standard phrase referring to the inherent power of the court * * (Dever v. Bowers, 341 Ill.App. 444, 448 (1950).) In Mason v. Dunn, 6 Ill.App ,3d 448 (1972), we found that the court lacked inherent power to sever the issues of liability and damages. The court’s jurisdiction or power is derived from the constitution, statute, and common law. Severance of liability and damage issues was unknown to the common law, our constitution and statutes make no provision for such power, and, as the majority recognizes, the court lacked the inherent power to enter such order. Under such circumstances, the rule of law applicable to the case at bar is found in Armstrong v. Obucino, 300 Ill. 140, 143 (1921), where the court stated: “Courts are limited in the extent and character of their judgments, and if they transcend their lawful powers their judgments and decrees are void and may be collaterally impeached wherever rights claimed under them are brought in question. The doctrine that where a court has once acquired jurisdiction it has a right to decide every question which arises in the cause, and its judgment or decree, however erroneous, cannot be collaterally assailed, is only correct when the court proceeds according to the established modes governing the class to which the case belongs and does not transcend in the extent and character of its judgment or decree the law or statute which is applicable to it.” (Emphasis added.) (See also People ex rel. Nordland v. Association of the Winnebago Home for the Aged, 40 Ill.2d 91, 95-96 (1968); Flake v. Pretzel, 381 Ill. 498, 505-06 (1943); Marabia v. Mary Thompson Hospital, 309 Ill. 147, 156-57 (1923).) Under former practice, a bill of review was available only where the claimed error was apparent on the face of the record and could not be availed of where the decree was merely the result of a mistake in judgment. An exception was recognized, however, where the decree was contrary to a rule of law or statutory provision. Collins v. Collins, 14 Ill.2d 178, 183 (1958). I find no set of facts or circumstances where, in Illinois, the trial court has the jurisdictional power to order a severance of the issues pertaining to liability and damages in a tort action. “Excess of jurisdiction may be defined as the state of being beyond or outside the limits of jurisdiction, and, as distinguished from the entire absence of jurisdiction, means that the act, although within the general power of the judge, is not authorized, and therefore void, with respect to the particular case, because the conditions which alone authorize the exercise of his general power in that particular case are wanting, and hence the judicial power is not in fact lawfully invoked. Although a court may have jurisdiction of the subject matter and the parties, its act or order-may, nevertheless, be in excess of its jurisdiction, as being something which it has no power to do ” * (Emphasis added.) 21 C.J.S. Courts § 25 (1940). I conclude that the trial court here lacked the power to sever the issues of liability and damages. By doing so, it exceeded its subject matter jurisdiction. Its order was therefore void and subject to attack in this appeal.