¶1The civil jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, is in the present, as in former constitutions, limited to cases, in which the amount in controversy exceeds fifty dollars. The amount in controversy, is the amount, claimed by the plaintiff, and not the amoimt of the recovery he may obtain. The recovery may be reduced below the amount claimed without affecting the fact that the latter was really the subject of a bona fide claim and of controversy. To prevent the institution of suits founded on money demands, for fictitious amounts with the view of conferring jurisdiction, the statutes from an early day have clothed the circuit courts with power to nonsuit a plaintiff recovering a sum less than fifty dollars, unless he made affidavit that the sum sued for was really due, and the failure to recover it, was prevented by the failure of proof, a plea of the statute of limitations, or other sufficient cause to be judged of by the court.—Clay’s Dig. 325, § 75; Code of 1876, § 3120. The statute applies to actions for moneyed demands only, and not to actions for the conversion, or for the detention of personal property. King v. Parmer, 34 Ala. 416. The Circuit Court did not err in overruling the motion to dismiss the suit, and its judgment is affirmed.
59 Ala. 508
Haws v. Morgan
Decided December 15, 1877
Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1877-12-15
Tried before the lion. James Q. Smith. Jackson Morgan brought an action of detinue in the Circuit Court of Montgomery against A. J. Haws, to recover '“ a bay horse, with the value of the use thereof during the detention from the 15th day of April, 1877.” The defendant pleaded the general issue. On the trial, the only evidence of the value of the horse was that of the plaintiff. He testified that the “ horse was worth eighty dollars.
Relies on King v. Parmer
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1877-12-15
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently January 1921
5 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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