40 Fla. 36 | Fla. | 1898
Lead Opinion
This cause comes here by writ of error from a final judgment in a mandamus proceeding rendered in the Circuit Court of St. Johns County on the 8th day of July, 1897. The writ of error therein was issued by the Clerk of the Circuit Court on the 29th day of November, 1897, and was recorded on the same date by the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the minute-book of said Circuit Court, and is returnable to the first day of the present term of this court.
The defendants in error, respondents below, now move this court, on special appearance for that purpose alone, to dimiss the writ of error on the following grounds: 1st. Because said writ of error does not contain the names of the plaintiffs and defendants' in error. 2nd. Because there has been and is no service or notice of said writ or this appeal as required by law upon the
Under the second and third grounds of this motion an assault is made upon the constitutionality of the following Chapter 4529 laws, approved May 8th, 1897, entitled : “An act to abrogate the writ of scire facias ad audiendum errores in appellate proceedings to the Supreme Court, and to provide a substitute therefor, in civil causes.” “Section 1. That from and after the passage of this act it shall not be necessary, in order to give to the Supreme Court jurisdiction over the person of any defendant in error in civil causes, to issue or to serve the defendant in error with a scire facias ad audiendum errores, or with any other writ, process ’or notice, in any civil cause taken by writ of error to the Supreme Court, for the purpose of notifying him of the pendency of such writ of error proceeding; but all writs of error from the Circuit Court to the Supreme Court, in civil causes, shall be recorded by the Clerk of the Circuit Court to whom such writ of error is addressed in the minute-book of his court within ten days after its issuance or receipt by him, and such recording bjr the clerk of the writ of error shall be deemed, taken and held to be sufficient notice to the defendant in error of the pendency of such writ of error proceeding in the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court shall thereby acquire complete jurisdiction over the person of such defendant in error.” Section two of the same act expressly repeals all former legislation providing for the issuance, service and return of writs of scire facias ad audiendíim errores in civil cases from the Circuit Courts to the Supreme Court; and the third and last section of the act prorddes that the act shall take effect immediately upon its approval by the Governor.
It is contended that this law is violative of that pro
We think that our Legislature has the power, not only to regulate and prescribe the procedure to obtain in our several courts respectively, but also to regulate and prescribe the procedure by which causes tried in the courts of first instance shall be transferred for review to other tribunals clothed b}r the Constitution with revisory powers; and that when, in so doing, it provides that the issuance and record of a writ of error in' the court of first instance shall have the effect of- transferring the cause and the litigants therein to the jurisdiction of the revising court for re-examination, it has prescribed that “due process of law” contemplated by the Constitution. As before stated, our own and many other courts have made use of the expressions that a writ of error “was a new suit,” or was “in the nature of a new suit,” but we have been unable to find that any court anywhere has gone to the extent of asserting that it was so essentially and radically an original suit or proceeding as to require the same certainty and rigidity in the evidence that the parties to it have received actual notice of its pendency, as is called for in an original action at its first instance; but, on the contrary, we find the procedure prescribed here prior to this law, and elsewhere, providing for different forms of substituted or constructive notice in such cases. As-early as 1832 our Legislature provided that the notice of an appeal, or the scire facias ad audiendum errores could be served upon the agent, or attorney of record in the court below, of the defendant in error where he was a non-resident, or was not in the State. And in 1833 it was further provided that “In all cases wherein any final judgment, order or decree may be pronounced or rendered in any of the
Whatever similitude may heretofore have existed between writ of error proceedings under the old law', requiring service of scire facias to hear errors upon the defendants therein, and those proceedings by which an entirely original suit is first instituted, and that has heretofore given rise to the expressions that “a writ of error u'as a new' suit,” or “in the nature of a new suit,” we think that one of the practical effects of the law under discussion is to render the appellate proceeding by writ of error more pointedly a continuation of the same suit by and between the same patries. It is a well settled and cardinal rule that in passing upon the constitutionality of statutes generally, nothing but a clear violation of the Constitution will justify the courts in overruling the legislative will; and where there is a reasonable
It is further argued here that this statute is partial in its operation, in that it affects only cases appealed from the Circuit Courts to the Supreme Court/ leaving a different procedure for appeals from inferior courts to the Circuit Courts. There is no merit in this contention. Under our judicial system we have but one Supreme Court clothed by the constitution with final appellate jurisdiction over all causes originating in the several Circuit Courts. This' statute furnishes the procedure by which all cases at law tried and pushed to judgment in any or all of said Circuit Courts may be transferred for review to such appellate court, and is a uniform procedure universally applicable to all common law cases reviewable on writ of error by the Supreme Court. The Circuit Courts in turn have final appellate jurisdiction from divers inferior courts and it is no objection to the law under discussion that a different procedure is prescribed for the taking of appeals from those inferior courts to the Circuit Courts. This statute prescribes, as we think, due and reasonable process of law, and, when its provisions are complied with, a judgment of this court in a cause brought to it in conformity therewith could not be said to have the effect of depriving any party to it of any right without that due process of law contemplated by the constitutions of the United States and of our own State.
Having disposed of these grounds of the motion, raising questions that we deem it important to settle at once in view of the recent legislation involved and questioned, we now revert to the first ground of the motion and find it to be well taken. The petition for mandamus and the alternative writ issued in response thereto was on behalf of John Andreu and twenty-one other individuals named therein as relators. The judgment therein from which the writ of error was taken was a joint judgment quashing and dismissing the alternative writ and adjudging the costs jointly against all of said relators. It was necessary, under the repeated rulings of this and other courts, to sue out the writ of error in the names of all the parties against whom the judgment was jointly rendered. The writ of error issued in this case, as copied into the transcript of the record, was issued in the name of John Andreu “et al.,” nowhere naming or showing who his co-plaintiffs in error are, but showing affirmatively, by the use of the abbreviation “et al.” that there are other unnamed co-plaintiffs in error. This is fatal to the writ of error, that in all cases should give the individual names,of all parties plaintiff and defendant in error in order that this court may know by the record who the parties are before it; more especially should this be the rule under our statute discussed supra that substitutes the record of the writ of error in the court below in place of the former service of scire facias ad audiendum errores. Deneale v. Stump’s Exexcutors, 8 Pet. 526; Holliday v. Batson, 4 How. 645; Smith v. Clark, 12 How. 21; Estis v. Trabue, 128 U. S. 225, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 58; Beall v. Executors of Fox, 4 Ga. 403; Miller v. McKenzie, 10 Wall. 582; The Protector, 11 Wall. 82; Alston v. Rowles, 13 Fla. 110;
Another ground of this motion to dismiss is that the original writ of error has not been returned to and filed in this court. As the motion has already been disposed of upon another ground it would not ordinarily be necessary to consider this additional ground thereof, but as there seems to be some doubt at the bar as to whether the recent statute already discussed herein has not effected some change in the former practice governing the return and disposition of the writ of error itself, we deem it important to pass upon this question of practice also. In Joost v. Elliott, 20 Fla. 924, it is said
Upon the first ground of the motion the writ of error herein is dismissed.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
By the decision in this case this court assumes a position in the front rank of those who concede power in the Legislature to prescribe constructive service of process in personal actions. I had always supposed that certain rights of individuals among a free people were laid away among the fundamentals by that provision of our Declaration of Rights which declares that “No person shall* * *be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” and that by this provision the hand of sovereignty itself was stayed whenever extended to deprive individuals of those rights. This provision is but a paraphrase of a part of Chapter 29 of Magna Char-ta, which was adopted by the peopleof Floridaby express legislative enactment long before we aspired to be a sovereign and independent State. Flint River Steamboat Company v. Roberts, 2 Fla. 102, text 113, S. C. 48 Am. Dec. 178. Every constitution adopted by our people has perpetuated this provision of Magna Charta, and placed it beyond the control of government, and while other features of our organic law have been changed, modified or abrogated through amendments and revisions of the Constitution, this provision has remained, im
It is insisted, however, that the act under consider
I do not think the cases cited in the opinion of the court sustain the constitutionality of the act. I believe the true rule regarding constructive service of the notice of a writ of error, is clearly set forth and defined in the case of Nations v. Johnson, 24 How. 195, in which Mr. Justice Clifford says: "The question here is, whether a party duty served with notice in a subordinate court, after he has appeared and answered to the suit and secured an erroneous judgment in his favor, may voluntarily absent himself from the jurisdiction of the appellate tribunal so as to render it impossible to give him personal notice of an 'appeal, and stil! have a right to complain that the notice was served by publication, pursuant to the law of the jurisdiction from which he has thus voluntarily withdrawn. We think not.” We says further, “Actual notice ought to be given in all cases where it is practicable, even in appellate tribunals,. but whenever personal service has been rendered impossible by the removal of the appellee or defendant in error from the jurisdiction, service by publication is sufficient to give the appellate tribunal jurisdiction of the subject and the person, provided, it appears in the record that personal notice was given in the subordinate-court, and that the party there appeared and litigated the merits of the controversy.” The case of Fitzsimmons v. Johnson, 90 Tenn. 416, 17 S. W. Rep. 100, also related to constructive notice of a writ of error on a non-resident — one who could not be personalty served.
I had hoped that the act under consideration would relieve us from many technical questions of practice arising under the old form of obtaining jurisdiction in error, but I see many difficulties ahead of us in enforcing the new act, which it is unnecessary to mention at this time. I believe that under our present rules, which require notices to be served upon the opposite party at various stages in the progress of submitting the case in this court, all parties or their attorneys would have actual notice of the pendency of the writ of error; but the notices required by these rules were never intended to supply the place of original process whereby to acquire jurisdiction of the person, and these rules are subject to repeal by this court at its pleasure. I am unwilling to affirm the constitutionality of an act of the Legislature which can be upheld only in connection with the rules of a court which it can abrogate at any time.
It seems to me that if the act of 1897 does not exhibit a departure from due process of law, it is hard to conceive of one that can. The writ of error was of such a character, whether original or not, that no court of error could at common law, as it existed for ages, acquire jurisdiction over the defendant therein without service upon him of an original process, if he could be found. This was the recognized due process of law by which to acquire jurisdiction. This was also the law of this State by express statute for seventy years. It seems to me that if proceedings in error were merely the continuation of a pending suit, the writ itself being a step in the cause, the astute lawyers of the common law, and those of our own country, would long since have found it out, and insisted upon the repeal of a useless and oftentimes difficult and expensive ceremony of giving notice
In my opinion Chapter 4529, acts of 1897, is unconstitutional and void.