Court Opinion

ID: 9626011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:59:12.242525+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:19.261594
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
Respectfully, I dissent. Art. VIII, sec. 7 of our Constitution says that “The Dis*136trict Court shall have original jurisdiction in all matters civil and criminal, * * *.” This provision should end the “matter,” since this case is a criminal “matter.” (Emphasis added.)
In my book “original” means “original,” — not derivative, appellate, collateral, supplemental, adjunctive or remotely related.
A web of indecision seems to have been spun by some cases cited in the main opinion enmeshed, but nonetheless, not crushed the life from the Jardine case by any overruling of it. No fine distinction as to that case 'can destroy its import; nor, what is more 'important, can such refinement destroy the lexicography of the plain, simple wording of Art. VIII, sec. 7 of the Constitution.
Although I am convinced that the District Court had jurisdiction in this case, I again commend the language of Mr. Justice Wade in Haslam v. Morrison, 113 Utah 14, p. 24, 190 P.2d 520, p. 525 (1948), and reiterate the language of Pons v. Faux, 16 Utah 2d 93, 396 P.2d 407, 1964, case No. 10178, this court, to the effect that “we think •the better practice would have been to initiate this case in the lower courts under available statutes designed to relieve the district courts of their work loads.”
CROCKETT, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of PIENRIOD, C. J.