89 Ky. 178 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1889
delivered the opinion of the court.
This is a proceeding by Burton Yance for a mandamus from this court requiring Emmet Field, Judge of the Jefferson Court of Common Pleas, to proceed, according to the rules of court and law of the land, to judgment. with an action ordinary, in which said Yance is plaintiff and the Louisville Courier-Journal Company is defendant.
It appears from the petition filed in this court, and transcript of the record accompanying it, that the action was, in December, 1886, commenced in the Louisville Law and Equity Court, and the parties had pleaded to an issue triable by jury when, February 4, 1889, the plaintiff filed with the clerk of that court the following affidavit: “The plaintiff, Burton Yance, on oath, says that the judge before whom the above-styled action is now pending will not afford him a fair and impartial trial.” But, notwithstanding the affidavit was filed and objection made to the jurisdiction of the court, the action was, February 12, 1889, submitted to a jury for trial, who, however, having failed
It further appears that February 25, 1889, the plaintiff, in writing, directed the Clerk of the Jefferson Court of Common Pleas to place said action upon the docket of cases set at rules in that court, to be called March 18, 1889, which was done, and upon call of said action the plaintiff moved the last-named court to assign it to a day for trial, and to proceed with it to judgment.' But the court refused to permit made any entry of the motion, or of exceptions to its action or non-action, or to grant an appeal to this court, the reason, as appears from minutes of the proceeding then had, and as stated in the answer of the judge to the petition filed in this court, being that the action had not been transferred from the Louisville Law and Equity Court to the Jefferson Court of Common Pleas, and the latter had, consequently, no jurisdiction of it.
Section 477, Civil Code, is as follows: “The writ of mandamus, as treated of in this chapter, is an order of court of competent and original jurisdiction, commanding an executive or ministerial officer to perform an act, or omit to do an act, the performance or omission of which is enjoined by law, and it is granted on the motion of the party aggrieved, or of the Commonwealth when the public interest is affected.”
The writ of mandamus as thus defined and treated of in the Civil Code can not, in any case, be issued by this
In the case of German Insurance Company v. Landram, 88 Ky., 433, it was held that an affidavit identical with the one filed by the plaintiff in the Lou • isville Law and Equity Court was not sufficient to-require the judge of a court to vacate the bench or to deprive him of the power to try the action ; that “the fact or facts upon which the belief that the judge will not give the litigant a fair trial should and must be stated in the affidavit, and they must be of such a character as should prevent the judge from properly presiding in the case.”
As the affidavit filed by the plaintiff contains simply an expression of his .belief the Judge of the Louisville Law and Equity Court will not afford him a fair and impartial trial, without a statement of any fact whatever upon which the belief is founded, he was, accord
Wherefore, the application for the writ of mandamus is refused.