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59 Ind. 287

Mays v. Dooley

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided November 15, 1877

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1877-11-15

<p>•Jurisdiction. — Justice of the Peace. — Amendment.—Amount Sued for. — Pleading. — Where, in an action on a demand, in a justice’s court, an amended complaint, of more than one paragraph, is filed, the jurisdiction of the justice is ousted if the aggregate amount of the sums demanded exceed the amount of which he has jurisdiction, though the sum demanded by each paragraph, and by the original complaint, be less than that amount, unless the conclusion of the complaint limit the demand to that amount.</p> <p>.'Same. — Appeal.—Circuit Court. — In such case, the circuit court, on appeal from such justice, has no jurisdiction of the action.</p>

Relies on Pritchard v. Bartholomew · Wetherill v. Inhabitants of Congressional Township · Swift v. Woods

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently March 1953

16 state decisions

70187718801890190019101920193019401950decided

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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Niblack, J.

¶1— Dooley, the appellee, sued Mays, the appellant, before a justice of the peace, on a demand for one hundred and twenty dollars.

¶2Before the trial, an amended complaint was filed, in four paragraphs.

¶3The first paragraph set up a claim for eighty dollars.

¶4The second paragraph, in a somewhat different form, ¡also set up a claim for the same amount.

¶5The third paragraph stated facts on which judgment was demanded for one hundred dollars.

¶6The fourth paragraph alleged, that there was due the plaintiff, on a different .state of facts, the sum of one hun*288dred and twenty dollars, for which judgment was also demanded.

¶7There was a finding and a judgment for the defendant before the justice.

¶8The plaintiff appealed to the court below, where a demurrer was sustained to the first three paragraphs of the complaint, as amended, and where, on a trial on the fourth paragraph, a verdict was returned and a judgment rendered in his favor

¶9One of the errors assigned here raises the question of the jurisdiction of the circuit court to try and determine the cause on the appeal.

¶10The aggregate sum of money claimed to be due by the several paragraphs of the complaint considerably exceeded two hundred dollars, the limit of the justice’s jurisdiction in such cases as the one at bar; and there was ho conclusion to the complaint limiting the gross sum for which judgment was demanded to an amount within the jurisdiction of the justice.

¶11After the filing of the amended complaint, the justice had no further jurisdiction of the cause, and all the subsequent proceedings before him were a nullity. Swift v. Woods, 5 Blackf. 97; Wetherill v. The Inhabitants, etc., 5 Blackf. 357; Culley v. Laybrook, 8 Ind. 285; Guard v. Circle, 16 Ind. 401.

¶12The justice being without jurisdiction, the circuit court acquired no jurisdiction by the appeal. Pritchard v. Bartholomew, 45 Ind. 219.

¶13The circuit court was without jurisdiction to acton the demurrer to the complaint, and hence the sustaining of the demurrer to three of the paragraphs of the complaint did not in any manner bring the cause within its jurisdiction '

¶14The judgment is reversed, at the costs of the appellee, and the cause remanded, with instructions to the court below to dismiss the action.

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