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20 Ala. 229

Vaughan v. Robinson

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided January 15, 1852

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1852-01-15

Tried before the Hon. Robt. Dougherty. Yaughan sued Robinson before a justice of the peace, and judgment was rendered for the defendant, from which he appealed to the Circuit Court, and there filed his statement for forty-five dollars, to which Robinson pleaded non assumpsit.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1852-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 1902

8 state decisions

40185218601870188018901900decided

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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GOLDTHWAITE, J.

¶1It is certainly true, that the jurisdiction of a justice of the peace in civil cases is limited to amounts not exceeding fifty dollars, and that a judgment rendered by that officer for over that amount, would be corato nonjudice, and void; yet when the case is removed into the Circuit Court, and is there pending, it is competent for the parties to treat it as if originating in that court; and if they do so, a judgment rendered for an amount exceeding fifty dollars, would be held good, by virtue of the general jurisdiction of-that' court. The defendant can, however, on the appeal, avail himself of the want of jurisdiction in the justice, by bringing it to the notice of the Circuit Court, by plea in *230abatement, and if be does not do this, be waives all objection resulting from tbe mode in wbicb be is brought into that court. This principle was decided in tbe case of Bentley et al. v. Wright, 3 Ala. Rep. 607, and recognized in Hart v. Turk, 15 Ala. Rep. 675, and Rose v. Thompson, 17 Ala. Rep. 628, and we see no good reason for departing from tbe rule. Tbe rule admitted, it follows that tbe court below erred in its charge.

¶2Tbe judgment is reversed and tbe cause remanded.

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