Court Opinion

ID: 9532716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:24:12.651757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:49.519514
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
PRICE, Judge.
Counsel for defendant insists that in our opinion we “should have responded to appellant’s assertion on original submission that Section 1 of the 1947 local act creating the Colbert Law and Equity Court which set the jurisdictional limit of said court at the sum of $3,000.00, as applied to prohibit this defendant from being heard in the trial court on the merits of her $35,-000.00 plea of recoupment for personal injuries and property damage sustained by defendant in the same accident from which she is there being sued, is in violation of Sections 10 and 13 of the Alabama Constitution of 1901 and therefore unconstitutional.”
The insistence in the original brief is that said section is unconstitutional “if it can be said that appellee can successfully plead a judgment in this court in his favor in bar to the action of appellant against him in the Circuit Court of Colbert County, Alabama, arising from the same accident, and involving the same parties and subject matter.”
This question is not before us for consideration. It is not our province to assume that such a plea will be filed nor to speculate as to its disposition in the event it is filed.
In deference to appellant’s request we set out in full the stipulation of fact filed in the lower court on the motion to transfer the cause to the circuit court;
“The parties stipulate that the facts in regard to the Motion filed- in this cause by Defendant on April 12th, 1950, and amendment thereto filed on May 2nd, 1950, are as follows:
“There is now pending in the Colbert Law and Equity Court a cause, wherein T. R. Zickos is plaintiff and Mrs. J. R. Allen is defendant; that the summons and complaint in said cause was filed on the 21st day of December 1949, and a copy of said summons and complaint was served on the defendant on the 29th day of December, 1949.
“That there is now pending in the Circuit Court of Colbert- County, Alabama, a cause wherein Salona Newton Allen, is the plaintiff, and T. R. Zickos is the defendant; that the .summons and complaint in this *371cause was filed on the 23rd day of December, 1949, and for reasons unknown to the defendant the sheriff did not serve the defendant T. R. Zickos with a copy of the summons and complaint in the cause in the Circuit Court until the 11th day of January, 1950; that both of said causes of action are now pending for trial; that there is involved in each of these cases the same parties and the same subject matter; that Mrs. J. R. Allen and Salona Newton Allen are one and the same person; that defendant has filed in the said cause pending in the Colbert Law & Equity Court a plea of recoupment claiming damages in excess of the sum of Three Thousand ($3,000.00) Dollars.
“The cause of action of plaintiff, Zickos, against the defendant, Allen, in this court is the alleged negligence of Allen at the time and place alleged in the complaint, and the cause of action of plaintiff, Allen, against the defendant, Zickos, in the Circuit Court is the alleged negligence of the defendant, Zickos, at the time and place alleged in the complaint, which is the same time and place, and the same accident and collision between the same automobiles as alleged in this case.”
Application overruled.