Court Opinion

ID: 9794690
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:09:31.827146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:56.385290
License: Public Domain

Foster, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent from the decision affirming the judgment. The court does not have jurisdiction of this appeal, so it must be dismissed. In such circumstances, the court is powerless to affirm the judgment. Johnston v. Seattle Taxicab & Transfer Co., 89 Wash. 494, 154 Pac. 787.
The appellate jurisdiction of this court is derived solely from Art. IV, § 4, of the state constitution, which, so far as material, is:
“. . . excepting that its appellate jurisdiction shall not extend to civil actions at law for the recovery of money or personal property when the original amount in controversy, or.the value of the property does not exceed the sum of two hundred dollars . . . ”3
The modern function of pleading has no place in determining what the phrase “original amount in controversy” meant to the members of the constitutional convention *921seventy-two years ago. The meaning has not changed with the passage of time. It is the same now as then.
Three members of the constitutional convention of 1889, Judge John P. Hoyt, president of the convention,4 Judge Theodore L. Stiles and Judge Ralph Oregon Dunbar, became judges of this court as soon as it was constituted. The decisions interpreting the constitution during the period when those three men constituted a majority of the court of five have a special significance.
Bleecker v. Satsop R. Co., 3 Wash. 77, 27 Pac. 1073 (1891), decided that the amount originally sued for and not the amount of the judgment was the decisive factor on the jurisdictional issue. The court (per Dunbar, J.) explained the meaning of the phrase “original amount in controversy” as follows:
“. . . but the language of our constitution excludes the idea of the amount in controversy at the time the case reaches the supreme court. It says the ‘original amount in controversy.’ The word ‘original’ is a word of plain import and well-understood meaning, and will hardly bear construction in this connection. The ‘original amount in controversy’ can mean nothing more nor less than the amount originally in controversy, or, in other words, the amount sued for. . . . ”
Six years after the adoption of the constitution, Doty v. Krutz, 13 Wash. 169, 43 Pac. 17, decided that the prayer for more than two hundred dollars did not give the court jurisdiction when the allegations of the complaint were for less than two hundred dollars. The court’s language (per Dunbar, J.) is:
“ . . . It is evident from the complaint that the amount originally in controversy was less than $200, but appellant insists that the amount alleged in the ad damnum clause in the complaint, and for which judgment was prayed, was the amount involved, so far as the constitutional inhibition on appeals where the amount is less than $200 is concerned. We do not think the constitution can be so construed. If so, any claim for a judgment, which could not possibly be *922obtained under the pleadings, would permit an appeal and destroy the object of the constitutional enactment.”
When Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Maryland v. Faben, 51 Wash. 308, 98 Pac. 764, was decided in 1909, Judge Dunbar was still on the court. The meaning of the “original amount in controversy” was explained:
“ . . . We believe that the word ‘original,’ as used in the constitution and statute, was for a significant and definite purpose, that purpose being precisely what the ordinarily accepted meaning of the word would indicate. The word is defined as follows: ‘Pertaining to the origin or beginning; preceding all others; first in order; primitive; pristine.’ . . . ”
In an unbroken line of cases from the earliest history of the court, the language of the complaint, not the demand for judgment, determines the original amount in controversy. The cases were last reviewed in Loveland v. Riley, 142 Wash. 44, 252 Pac. 154 (1927). The conclusion from the decided cases was there stated to be:
“The aggregate amount of the promissory notes in question here was one hundred ninety-five dollars. There being no claim for interest made in the complaint, other than in the prayer, and the claim for attorney’s fees not aiding the jurisdictional amount, it follows that under the authorities above referred to the original amount in controversy was less than two hundred dollars.”
The purpose of the constitutional provision is to make the jurisdiction of the superior court final as to small amounts, and to free the time of this court for the consideration of cases within its jurisdiction. State ex rel. McIntyre v. Superior Court, 21 Wash. 108, 57 Pac. 352; State ex rel. Hamilton v. Superior Court, 8 Wash. 271, 36 Pac. 27. This is especially true in 1961 when the delay in cases on the dockets of appellate courts is a matter of increasing public concern.5
The court does not have jurisdiction of this appeal. It cannot, therefore, affirm or reverse the judgment. The only *923permissible order is to dismiss the appeal because the “original amount in controversy” is less than two hundred dollars. This the court should do of its own motion. Green v. Nichols, 40 Wn. (2d) 661, 245 P. (2d) 468.

Only one other state constitution, Arizona, has the same language. Arizona Eastern R. Co. v. Hinton, 20 Ariz. 266, 179 Pac. 963.

Afterwards Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law.

The Battle of the Backlog in the Supreme Court, 33 Rocky Mt. L. Rev. 489 (June, 1961).