Court Opinion

ID: 9808353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:35:08.236071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:29.819844
License: Public Domain

*253Claes, C. J.,
concurring in.result: Tbe amount wbicli would be involved in stating an account in this case would necessarily place the cause beyond the jurisdiction of a justice of the peace. It is also true that there are many cases which hold that a justice of the peace is ousted of jurisdiction, however small the amount, if an equity has to be administered.
It is, perhaps, as well to call attention in this case as in any other to the fact that these rulings were first made by the courts under the influence of decisions rendered under the former Constitution and procedure, and are not warranted under the present Constitution and procedure. They have been reiterated only because not called in question.
The present Constitution (Art. IV, secs. 1, 2 and 27) is quite explicit. Section 1 provides: “The distinctions between actions at law and suits in equity, and the forms of all such actions and suits, shall be abolished.” They are abolished absolutely, not only as to the Superior Courts, but for the courts of justices of the peace and clerks and all other courts, for the next section (2) enumerates the courts, to all of which, of course, section 1 applies. There is no exception of any court from the provisions of section 1.
Section 27 confers on justices of the peace jurisdiction of all civil actions founded on contract, where the amount does not exceed $200 and wherein title to land is not involved, and authorizes the Legislature to give jurisdiction of all other civil actions where the property in controversy does not exceed $50, and this the General Assembly has done. Revisal, sec. 1420. The Constitution withdraws cases involving title to land, but neither the Constitution nor any statute withdraws any case, within the amount prescribed fox a justice, from his jurisdiction because an equity or an equitable element arises or must be- administered; and, indeed, this could not bo done, for the distinction between actions at law and suits in equity is abolished. The statute could not revive it for the court of the justice of the peace nor of the clerk. That the courts *254have attempted to revive it as to tbe justices of tbe peace and clerks, not always logically or without difficulty, is a curious instance of tbe persistence of tbe ideas prevalent under a former procedure, after that procedure and everything pertaining to it have been abolished. In tbe nature of things, there is no reason why a justice of tbe peace or a clerk, within his jurisdictional limits, should not administer rights involving equitable elements, as well as an action for the same amount in a case formerly not cognizable in a court of equity. A justice of the peace or clerk of the court cannot issue injunctions or appoint receivers, not because an equitable element arises, but because the statute does not name them as officers authorized to issue those writs. They are authorized to issue process in the ancillary remedies of arrest and bail, attachment, and claim and delivery.