192 P. 649 | Or. | 1920
“The sound rule óf construction, in respect to the courts of justices of the peace, is, to be liberal in reviewing their proceedings, as far as respects regularity and form, and strict in holding them to the exact limits of jurisdiction prescribed to them by the statute”: Jones & Crawford v. Reed, 1 Johns. Cas. (N. Y.) 20.
The first objection is that the date of the return of summons is not entered in the docket. As shown above by the copy of the docket the first entry states that a complaint was. filed on I)ecember 9, 1912, and that on December 11th the justice issued a summons. Opposite to this entry in the margin is the notation, “Summons, Feb. 20, ’13.” Then follows a copy of the return of the constable in full, showing, among other things, that the “within” summons came into his hands on December 11, 1912, and that he made a regular service of it on February 20, 1913. In addition, it is further recited that the defendant was duly served with a summons and copy of the complaint on February 20, 1913. >
This precise question arose in Bacon v. Bassett, 19 Wis. 45, under a statute which required the justice to enter in his docket “the time when process was issued against the defendant, when returnable, and the particular process issued and a statement of the return of the -officer.” In answer to the objection urged here, the court said:
“Neither was the omission of the justice to enter in his docket ‘a statement of the return of the officer,’ as required by subd. 2, sec. 11, ch. 120, E. S., an error for which the judgment can be reversed. The statute in this respect is no doubt directory. It imposes a merely ministerial duty, which, if not performed, does not affect the jurisdiction of the justice, or the regularity of the judgment.”
In Hall v. Tuttle, 6 Hill (N. Y.), 38 (40 Am. Dec. 382), the case arose upon a statute which required a judgment to be entered upon the docket “forthwith, ’ ’ and it was not so entered for three days after it had been pronounced. Justice Cowen held the
“Tbe statute is equally peremptory in respect to all tbe entries upon tbe docket. ‘Every justice, etc., shall keep a book, in which he shall enter,’ etc., specifying fifteen particulars, some before and some after judgment. * * Six of them are after judgment, beginning with the entry of the judgment: Suppose any or all to be omitted; or even no book to be kept. The whole is ministerial; and the statute touching the docket and its minutiae merely directory. Its language being imperative does not make it anything more. Almost every directory statute is imperative in its words. One entry is of the execution; another of the return, etc. The statute peremptorily commands these entries. Yet it would be a strange application of it, should we hold the judgment reversible for the omission of either. The entry of the judgment is no more a part of it than the instances put. It is mere evidence of the judgment, as it was at common law; valid, though made at any time, and open to correction according to the truth. To say that a clerical defect or omission in any of the fifteen docketed particulars should be ground of reversal, would be intolerable.”
Much of this is dictum, but it is persuasive, not only from the eminent standing of the learned justice who wrote the opinion, but from the additional fact that he was himself the author of a standard work on the civil jurisdiction of justices of the peace. And while we are not prepared to say that the omission of some entries in the docket required by our statute may render a judgment void, we do say that the omission to make the entries here under consideration more definite do not have that effect.
This being the case, the decree of the Circuit Court will be affirmed. Affirmed. Rehearing Denied.