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142 Ala. 625

Kidd v. Burke

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1904

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1904-11-15

Tried before the Hon. Terry Richardson. This was an action brought by the appellee, M. Burke, against the appellant, Louisa V. Kidd, as executrix of the will of H. B. Tulane, deceased, and sought to recover on common counts for money on and received by defendant’s testator for the use of plaintiff. There were verdict and judgment: in favor of the plaintiff. The defendant appeals and assigns as error the several rulings of the trial court to which exceptions were reserved.

Relies on Wightman v. Karsner · Ex parte Branch & Co. · Walker v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1904-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently December 1933

7 state decisions

301904191019201930decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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TYSON, J.

¶1The judgment from which this appeal is prosecuted was rendered by the circuit court of Elmore county on the 7th day of March, 1904. The record discloses that the court convened on the first Monday in March, it being the 7th day of said month. This was the time fixed by the Act creating the fifteenth judicial circuit and the Act known as the “Lusk Bill.” — General Act, pp. 488-566. Both of these acts have been recently declared to be unconstitutional. — Board of Revenue of Jefferson County v. Crow, 37 So. Rep. 469; State ex rel. v. Sayre (in MS.)

¶2The result of these decisions is that the county of Elmore was .never legally detached from the counties composing the fifth judicial circuit and that it has all along remained in that circuit. So then, the time fixed for the convening of the spring term of the circuit court in that county was and is on the 8th Monday after the fourth Monday in February, which, in the year 1904, was Monday the 18th day of April.

¶3We have here then a judgment rendered at a time not appointed by law for the holding of the court. When this is the case, the judgment is void for want of jurisdiction. Ex parte Branch, 63 Ala. 383; Davis v. State, 46 Ala. 80 and cases there cited; Johnson v. State, 37 So. Rep. 421; Walker v. State, 139 Ala. 56.

¶4It is true, in Lewis v. The Intendant and Town Council of Gainesville, 7 Ala. 85, it was, in effect, said that *627such judgments were not void and, therefore, could not be attacked collaterally, but in Wightman v. Karnser, 20 Ala. 455, it was pointed out that this was dictum, and was there repudiated.

¶5Appeal dismissed.

McClellan, C. J., Haralson, Dowdell, Simpson and Denson, J.J., concuring.
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