116 Mo. App. 437 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1906
This action was instituted before a justice of the peace for the purpose of enforcing the agister’s lien given by the statutes (R. S. 1899, art 2). The complaint contained no averment to show that the plaintiff Patchen resided in the township wherein the action was begun; that is to say, in LaBelle township. Judgment was rendered by default before the justice of the peace in favor of the plaintiff and the cause was appealed to the circuit court. The defendant appeared in the latter court and filed a motion to dismiss the case for the reason that the court had no jurisdiction of it, as the justice of the peace had no jurisdiction in the first instance. Plaintiff was permitted to amend his complaint by inserting an averment that he was a resident of La-Belle township; and, after this amendment was made, the court overruled the motion to dismiss. A jury trial followed, which resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff and judgment accordingly. The defendant appealed to this court. It is assigned for error that the plaintiff was wrongly permitted to amend his original statement. The position taken by the defendant is that the proceeding was begun before a court of inferior jurisdiction and seeks to enforce a special statutory right, unknown to the common law, by a summary method different from the ordinary procedure; hence, that unless every jurisdictional fact was stated in the original complaint, the justice had no jurisdiction; and as the jurisdiction of the circuit court on appeal had to be derived from that of the magistrate, no amendment of the complaint was permissible, but the proceeding should have been dismissed on defendant’s motion. The proposition that the facts requisite to give the justice jurisdiction of the cause should have been stated, is sound; as the agister’s lien is of statutory creation and the remedy to enforce it summary. [Schultheis v. Nan, 4 Mo. App. 592; Burns v. Lidwell, 6 Mo. App. 192; Stone v. Kelley, 59 Mo. App. 214.] When courts of limited and inferior jurisdiction are exercising special statutory powers in a mode of pro