Allen v. Hall

• Decision Date: 12 June 1878
• Citation: 77 Ky. 85
• Parties: Allen v. Hall (Two Cases).
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

77 Ky. 85

Allen v. Hall (Two Cases).

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

June 12, 1878

APPEALS FROM HICKMAN COMMON PLEAS COURT.

BULLOCK & BULLOCK FOR APPELLANT.

The title to the act in question relates to more than one subject, and is therefore unconstitutional. (Con., sec. 37 art. 2.)

OPINION

ELLIOTT JUDGE:

The appellee Hall brought two suits before a justice of the peace of Hickman County on two promissory notes for over $60 each and the justice having rendered judgment for only $22.22 in each case, Hall appealed to the court of common pleas. On the trial of these appeal-suits the law and facts were submitted to the court, and a motion made by appellant to dismiss appeal number two, which was overruled, and judgment rendered for $66.66 in each case, the same being the amount of each note sued on.

To reverse these judgments these two appeals are prosecuted, and as each involves the same questions of law, they are considered together.

The right of appeal to the common pleas court in cases of this character was conferred by an act of the legislature approved March 20, 1876, and it is insisted that that act is no violation of section 37, article 2 of the constitution of this state, because the title of the act makes it relate to more than one subject. The title is as follows:

" An act to regulate the civil jurisdiction of justices of the peace, police judges, and quarterly courts, and the appellate jurisdiction of circuit courts from judgments, and to authorize the quarterly courts to appoint clerks."

The act, then, related to but one subject. The regulation of the civil jurisdiction of the three courts referred to by the title, and the authority conferred on the quarterly courts to appoint a clerk, related to the same subject, so far as one of these courts was concerned; that is, it so regulated the jurisdiction of the quarterly court as to give it power to appoint its clerk to discharge ministerial duties which, till the passage of the act, the court itself had to perform.

Under the title " An act to regulate the civil jurisdiction of justices of the peace, police judges, and quarterly courts and the appellate jurisdiction of circuit courts," the legislature could have authorized the quarterly courts to appoint clerks of these courts, and the same would not have been foreign to the subject named in the title, and the additional statement in the title " and to authorize the quarterly cou...