City of Waterville v. Van Slyke

• Decision Date: 01 March 1886
• Citation: 29 L.Ed. 772,6 S.Ct. 622,116 U.S. 699
• Parties: CITY OF WATERVILLE v. VAN SLYKE. Filed
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

6 S.Ct. 622

116 U.S. 699

29 L.Ed. 772

CITY OF WATERVILLE v. VAN SLYKE.

Filed March 1, 1886.

E. Stillings, for plaintiff in error.

S. E. Brown, for defendant in error.

MILLER, J.

This is a writ of error to the circuit court for the district of Kansas. In that court there was a judgment against the plaintiff in error for the sum of $1,282.06. The amount is too small to give this court jurisdiction on a writ of error to a circuit court. There is, however, a certificate of division of opinion between the circuit judge and the district judge sitting at the trial without a jury. We have decided that under the act of 1872 a case may be brought to this court on a certificate of division, without regard to the amount in controversy. Dow v. Johnson, 100 U. S. 158. But that decision was based upon a valid certificate which presented properly questions material to the decision of the case. If this were not necessary to our jurisdiction, a form of certificate which might present no question that this court can consider might be used to require of it a review of other matters than those on which the court divided, though the amount in controversy is insignificant. It is therefore only where the certificate does present, in accordance with the statute, a division of opinion in such a manner and on such a question as to give this court jurisdiction that the amount in controversy can be disregarded as an element of jurisdiction.

As to the character of the certificate on which this court will act, the statute of 1872 and the Revised Statutes have made no change, and the decisions of this court and full on that subject. The substance of these decisions, as applicable to the case before us, is that each question so certified must contain a distinct proposition of law which this court can answer negatively or affirmatively, and that the whole case cannot be presented by a recital of the evidence and interrogatories so framed as to require this court to decide the whole case on mixed propositions of law and fact. In short, while such a statement of facts must accompany the certificate as to show that the question of law is applicable to the case, the point on which the judges differed must be a distinct question of law, clearly stated.

In Wilson v. Barnum, 8 How. 258, the court said: 'This act has been in force for nearly forty years, * * * and in the multitude of questions which have been certified this court has never taken jurisdiction of a question of fact. And in a question of law it requires the precise point to be stated, otherwise the case is remanded without an answer.' The same thing is said in Brobst v. Brobst, 4 Wall. 2; namely, that 'it has been repeatedly determined that only questions of law upon distinct points in a cause can be brought to the court by certificate.' In the case of U. S. v. Briggs, 5 How. 208, on a demurrer to indictment, the judges certified a division of opinion as to whether the demurrer was well taken; and, though the record showed the grounds of demurrer, the court said: 'The question upon which the disagreement took place is not certified. The difference of opinion is, indeed, stated to have been upon the point whether the demurrer should be sustained. But such a question can hardly be called a point in the case, within the meaning of the act of congress, for it does not show whether the difficulty arose upon the construction of the act of congress on which the indictment is founded, or upon the form of proceeding adopted to inflict the punishment, or upon any supposed defects in the indictment. On the contrary, the whole case is ordered to be certified upon the indictment, demurrer, and joinder, leaving this court to look into the record, and determine for itself whether any sufficient objection can be made in bar of the prosecution, and without informing us what questions had been raised in the circuit court upon which they differed.' Having said that the causes of demurrer could not inform the court on that subject, the chief justice added: 'But we are bound to look to the certificate alone for the question which occurred and for the point on which they differed, and as this does not appear, we have no jurisdiction in the case.' A case very analogous to the one before us is that of White v. Turk, 12 Pet. 238, in which the court says: 'The intention of congress, in passing the act under which the proceeding has taken place, was that a division of the judges of the circuit court upon a single material point, in the progress of the cause, should be certified to the court for its opinion, and not the whole cause. * * * This certificate brings the whole cause before this court, and if we were to decide the question presented, it would in effect be the exercise of original rather than appellate jurisdiction.' To the same purport is the language guage of Chief Justice MARSHALL in U. S. v. Baily, 9 Pet. 273. In the case of Havemeyer v. Iowa Co., 3 Wall. 294, the point is fully considered. See, also, Dennistoun v. Stewart, 18 How....