Court Opinion

ID: 9827063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:06:27.623642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:22.017730
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
[5] We note the following language in the argument upon motion for rehearing: “The law says that trials of cases from the justice court to the county court shall be ‘de novo.’ Xet it seems that in this case the higher court has seen fit to send this cause, not back to the court from where it is appealed, which was a court of record, but it has gone further and sent it to the court which is not one of record. * * * In fact, there is no way that we can see thus far to get this case back before the honorable justice of the peace.” This court reversed and remanded this cause to the county court, and the effect of its judgment would, of course, be extended no further. The county court has the jurisdiction to retry this cause upon such appropriate pleadings and testimony as it deems will meet the issues involved, as it is a direct proceeding for mandamus in that court and to that extent is an independent suit to meet the purposes of that proceeding.
[6] The appellee is insistent that fundamental error apparent upon the face of the record does not exist in this cause. In this cause the relator executed a pauper’s affidavit in another proceeding in the justice court, which was set aside by the justice ot the peace upon a contest filed by the opposite litigant in that cause, upon proper notice given to the relator, who was the defendant in the other case. The relator, in his petition for mandamus, in order to obtain the right of appeal, alleged the pauper’s affidavit but did not assail the subsequent action of the justice of the peace in reversing his former action, in setting aside the pauper’s affidavit. This fact was prominent in this record. This latter order of the justice of the peace, standing unassailed by relator in this mandamus proceeding in the county court, we decided then, and reiterate, that it went to the very right of the cause and to the foundation of this proceeding. It is true we inspected the record and discussed the inefficiency of evidence to support a fundamental finding necessary to maintain the judgment of the court; and, the lack of pleading being apparent, it was better to discuss the evidence than leave appellee in the dark; and without a pleading assailing the order of the justice of the peace, with the additional evident circumstances; in the *524record of an absolute lack of testimony to sustain the judgment of the court, we held that this order of the justice of the peace, not having been shown to have been improper, by either pleading or evidence, and fundamentally controlling the right of appeal, until stricken down, would necessarily stand.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.