105 Ala. 142 | Ala. | 1894
The act approved February 21st, 1893, entitled “An act to fix the amount of the pay of circuit court solicitors and other solicitors, who are paid
The particular question presented for decision is, whether the commissions to which a solicitor may become entitled under the statute referred to, are payable from the State treasury, before the fees upon the amount of which they are to be computed, have been paid into the treasury; or are they payable when the solicitor has performed the duty of prosecuting defendants in criminal cases to conviction, fixing the amount of the fees and the duty of the proper officers to collect and pay them .into the treasury. The latter seems the plain interpretation and construction of the statutes, and especially so when they are read in the light of the history of the legislation touching the compensation of solicitors, and in connection with other statutes having relation to the same subject.
Prior to the act of February 28, 1887, (Pamph. Acts, 1886-87, p. 161), the compensation of solicitors w'as derived wholly from the fees to which the statute declared them entitled, and which'on conviction were taxable a.s costs against the defendant, and which, if he was insolvent, was paid from the fine§ and forfeitures in the
The purpose of the act of February 28, 1887, and its scope and effect are clearly expressed in the title : “ An act to pay salaries to solicitors instead of the fees which they now receive, and to require said fees to be paid into the State treasury.” The first section provides that instead of the fees solicitors were entitled to receive for convictions procured by them, each solicitor should receive an annual salary of three thousand dollars to be paid quarterly from the State treasury. The second section provides that all fees which may be by law taxed against defendants upon conviction as solicitors’ fees, when collected, should be paid into the State treasury, and the clerks of the courts were required to make to the Auditor quarterly reports of the fees collected in their respective counties. The third section provides, that all solicitors’ fees collected from convicts sentenced to hard labor for the county, when collected, should be paid into the State treasury.
The act works, and was intended to work, a radical change in the mode of compensating solicitors. The duties of the office remaijj as they, were defined by the
The changes of the act of 1887 wrought by the acts of 1893, now under consideration, are, first, the reduction of the fixed salary from three thousand to twenty-four hundred dollars ; second, in the manner of its payment, rendering it payable monthly, as are the salaries of other officers, instead of quarterly. As the salary was reduced, the acts provide for the payment of commissions on fees earned by a solicitor, in addition to the salary, until such commissions equal six hundred dollars, the sum of the reduction of the salary, and these commissions are to be paid, in the words of the acts, “as the salaries of solicitors are paid.” The manifest'purpose is, compensation to the solicitor for the reduction of the fixed salary, if his services yielded fees payable into the treasury, of all right to which he had been divested, until the commissions equalled the reduction. The words of the acts are plain and unambiguous, and are well adapted to the carrying out of' this purpose. The commissions are payable as, or when, the fees are “earned.” When the fees were the right and property of the solicitor, compensation to him for specific services rendered, they were earned by him on convictions,
Reading the words of the acts in their ordinary signification, in the light of the history of the legislation touching the compensation of solicitors, and in connection with the act of February 28, 3887, which remains of force except in the particulars to which we have adverted, we can not doubt, the commissions of a solicitor are payable when he has performed the duty of prosecuting defendants in criminal cases to conviction, fixing the amount of the fees the State is entitled to receive, and duty of the proper officer to collect and pay them into the State treasury. This was the view on which the court below proceeded, and the judgment must be affirmed.