Maxfield v. Johnson

Decided October 15, 1866

California Supreme Court · decided 1866-10-15

The plaintiff commenced an action before a Justice of the Peace to recover judgment on an account for two hundred and ninety-eight dollars. The defendant answered, setting up a counterclaim in the sum of five hundred and seventy dollars. Upon the trial the plaintiff obtained judgment for one hundred and seventy-five dollars, from which judgment the defendant appealed to the County Court.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1866-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently September 1920

9 state decisions

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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By the Court, Sanderson, J.:

¶1This Court has no jurisdiction in this case. The amount sued for was only two hundred and ninety-eight dollars. The appellate jurisdiction of this Court is fixed by the Constitution, and in this class of cases is limited to such as involve the sum of three hundred dollars, exclusive of interest, and it is not in the power of the Legislature to confer jurisdiction in cases where the demand, exclusive of interest, is less. The ad da/nmum clause in the complaint is the test of jurisdiction, and the costs of the action constitute no part of the amount in controversy. This question is unaffected by the fact that the defendant sets up a counterclaim in excess of three hundred dollars. He had no legal right to do so. He could set up only such a counterclaim as he could have sued upon in a Justice’s Court. (Prac. Act, Sec. 574.)

¶2Appeal dismissed.