Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

67 Ala. 603

Johnson v. Ray

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided December 15, 1880

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1880-12-15

Petition for Sale of Lands for Partition. Appeal from the Probate Court of Cherokee. Heard before Hou. James H. Leath.

Relies on Jones' Adm'r v. Brooks · Whitman v. Reese

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1880-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently November 1916

7 state decisions

301880189019001910decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

STONE, J.

¶1— The present appeal grew out of a statutory proceeding to obtain a sale of lands for partition, under section 3514 of the Code of 1876. To render such proceedings valid, the petition must contain enough to give the court jurisdiction. — 1 Brick. Dig. 939, §§ 351, 356.

¶2The petition in the present case is fatally defective, in the following particulars : First, The proceeding is not on the application of the persons entitled thereto, or of any one of them. — Code, § 3497. Second, The petition does not set forth the interest of each person — tenant in common — in the lands of which partition is sought; and, third, it does not specify the number of shares into which the land or money is to be divided. — Code, § 3498.

¶3The Probate Court never having acquired jurisdiction in the premises, the whole proceeding is coram non judice and void, and should have been so declared in the Probate Court. Whitman v. Reese, 59 Ala. 532; Jones v. Brooks, 30 Ala. 588.

¶4Reversed and remanded, that the Probate Court may make an order, vacating and annulling the order of sale.

/67/ala/603 · .json · Public domain