2 Binn. 264 | Pa. | 1810
delivered the court’s opinion.
Three questions have been brought forward by the defendants’ counsel in this cáse. 1st, Whether the supplement to the arbitration act, passed 29th March 1809, extends to suits depending in this court? 2d. Whether it extends to suits in which a body corporate is defendant? 3d. If the law comprehends suits in this court, to what court does the appeal from the report of the arbitrators lie? In the course of the argument, great stress has been laid on the inconveniences which will ensue, if the act is construed so as to include actions in this court. When the meaning of a law is doubtful, the argument from inconvenience has great weight; but when the meaning is clear, it is the duty of judges to construe it according to its intent, without regard to conse
It is enacted in the 1st section of the act, that it shall be lawful for either party, in all civil actions or suits brought or to be brought, in any court of this commonwealth, to enter at the prothonotary’s office, a rule of reference, &c. It is impossible to make use of language more clear or more comprehensive. Nor can any good reason be assigned, why the city and county of Philadelphia should have been distinguished from all other parts of the state, with regard to the operation of this law. However people may differ about its policy, it must have been intended by the makers as a public benefit. It would therefore have been an unpardonable partiality in them, to exclude the suitors of any court from its advantages, and particularly the suitors of a court in which the most important causes are decided. This act appears to have been drawn in great haste, and is not perfectly consistent. Obscurities and difficulties will be found in the subsequent parts; but nothing of sufficient weight, to take off the force of those general words in the 1st section which define the objects of the law. I shall take notice of several of those difficulties in considering the second and third questions.
2d. If bodies corporate, defendants, are not within the law, it must be because there is something in their nature inconsistent with its provisions; for they are not expressly-excepted. It is contended that they must be excepted by implication, because they are excluded from the benefit of an appeal, which is given on conditioná incompatible with the nature of a corporation. If the premises of this argument are well founded, the conclusion follows inevitably. It was the manifest intention of the law to give an appeal in all cases; and this no doubt from a firm resolution of the legislative body, not to violate the constitution of the commonwealth, which secures to the citizens the trial by jury. It is to be examined then, whether corporations being defendants are, excluded from an appeal? The 11th section gives an appeal under certain rules, regulations, and restrictions, one of which is that the party appellant shall enter into a recogni
The 11th section declares that if either party shall be dis
Rule discharged.
The provisions of the law upon which this case was ruled, have in many respects been altered by “ an act to regulate arbitrations,” passed the 19th March 1810. By the 11th section of this act, the appeal lies to the court in which the cause was pending at the time the rule of reference was entered,