55 N.J.L. 539 | N.J. | 1893
The question to be decided is whether the judge of a District Court has jurisdiction to try the merits of a case where the matter in dispute exceeds the sum of $200, when the defendant has appeared at the proper time and demanded a jury. In the case before us, the venire was withheld solely because the defendant refused to advance the fees and costs incident thereto, so that the precise point raised is whether the defendant’s right to a trial by jury was lawfully made to depend upon the prepayment by him of the expenses of the venire.
The question whether the legislature, by increasing the jurisdiction of inferior tribunals, may lawfully take away the right of trial by a common law jury, or may hamper it with conditions that affect its usefulness, is evidently one of large importance in a constitutional point of view. The constitutional requirement that “the right to a trial by juiy shall remain inviolate,” guarantees the opportunity to submit common law rights to a tribunal that shall possess the attributes of the historical jury as it existed at the time of the adoption of the organic law. The language of that instrument, however, with respect to the right to this mode of trial, is that it shall remain inviolate, not that it shall be unalterable; so that the limits of legislative action are not so circumscribed as to preclude the exercise of some power over the jurisdiction and procedure of inferior courts, although the existence of even such a power was doubted by Elmer, J., in State v. Zeigler, 3 Vroom 262. Legislative action of this kind has received judicial sanction in many of the courts of this country. Beers v. Beers, 4 Conn. 535; Curtis v. Gill, 34 Id. 54; Guile v. Brown, 38 Id. 237; Hapgood v. Doherty, 74 Mass. 373; State v. Allen, 45 Mo. App. 551; Dawson v. Horan, 51 Barb. 459; Knight v. Campbell, 62 Id. 16; Emerick v. Harris, 1 Binn. 416 ; Biddle v. Commonwealth, 13 Serg. & R. 410; Norton v. McLeary, 8 Ohio, N. S., 205; Vanzant v. Waddell, 2 Yerg. 260; Morford v. Barnes, 8 Id. 446; Keddie v. Moore, 2 Murph. 45.
The decision of the present case does not, however, call for the expression of an opinion upon either of these questions; still less does it warrant the adoption of any rule limiting legislative control over this subject, for the reason that there is in this state no legislation of the character criticised in the cases cited. Our statute books fail to show a vestige of authority for the proposition that a defendant who has been sued in a District Court for a sum in excess of $200, is required to prepay the expenses of the venire, which, upon his demand, the judge is directed’to issue. Rev. Sup., p. 230, § 31.
If suen a requirement exists, it must be by force of statutory provision. The act under which these suits are brought was approved March 27th, 1882, and relates to “the jurisdiction and practice of District Courts in this state.” Pamph. L., p. 195. It is general in terms, and its effect is to extend the jurisdiction of these statutory courts to suits in which the matter in dispute does not exceed $300. It likewise transfers to the District Courts, in such cases, some of the practice and most of the fee bill of the Circuit and Common Pleas Courts. Among .other things, it provides that when the- matter in dispute is above the sum of $200, the venire shall issue to the sheriff, and that the fee of each juror shall be fifty cents per day, “ to be paid as now provided by law in other cases tried by jury in said courts.” The provisions for the payment of juries in the act concerning District Courts relate solely to actions of debt and apply exclusively to
With respect to the expenses of these statutory courts it will be observed that the plaintiff and defendant stand in totally different attitudes. The plaintiff chooses the tribunal in which he will bring his suit. When the amount of his claim is above $200 he has from which to select the Supreme Court, the Circuit Court and the Court of Common Pleas, in all of which a common law trial by jury is provided at public expense. If, with these courts open to him, the plaintiff elects to take the defendant before a statutory tribunal, where either party may demand a jury, it is doubtful if he can be heard to complain of any reasonable regulation rendered necessary by the legislative frame of the tribunal selected. With the defendant it is totally different. The legislature has made the right to a jury absolute if demanded at the proper time. The defendant has had no voice in choosing the forum, hence has submitted himself to no implied conditions arising from its construction. He is there in invitum, with the right to question the constitutionality of the procedure in all its steps, and to ignore utterly all innovations upon his common law rights for which express legislative authority does not exist. Ho custom, however reasonable, and no rule of court, however adopted, can deprive him of a constitutional privilege that is unconditionally incorporated in the legislative act to which
It is not likely, if there was at that time an established practice by which the defendant was subjected to the vastly greater hardship of advancing the jury fees before trial, it would have been overlooked by the zealous author of that treatise.
In the case before us, when the defendant demanded a jury, it became the duty of the judge either to issue the venire or to dismiss the case; he had no authority to require of the defendant any condition not prescribed by the statute, nor any jurisdiction “to inquire into the merits of the cause” himself.
