Fitzgerald v. Arel

• Decision Date: 21 March 1884
• Citation: Fitzgerald v. Arel, 63 Iowa 104, 18 N.W. 713 (Iowa 1884)
• Parties: FITZGERALD v. AREL.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

63 Iowa 104

18 N.W. 713

FITZGERALD

v.AREL.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Filed March 21, 1884.

Supplemental opinion. See S. C. 16 N. W. REP. 112.

*713PER CURIAM.

The appellee, in a petition for rehearing, calls our attention to Bradley v. Fraser, 54 Iowa, 289, S. C. 6 N. W. REP. 293, and insists that while the facts in that case are not precisely like the facts in this, the difference is not such as to justify a difference in ruling. The specific question to be determined is as to whether the defendant was an actual resident of Des Moines county or of Palo Alto county. It is not easy, perhaps, to lay down a rule by which it can be determined in all cases whether a person is an actual resident of a given county when it is conceded that he has a legal residence in another county. But if a person who, having a legal residence in one county, goes into another, and there hires a house and sets up housekeeping therein with his family, with the intention of remaining there until he completes a certain job of work, does not become an actual resident of the latter county, it would be difficult to suppose a case of actual residence in one county where the legal residence was in another.

The appellee does not contend that we should put a construction upon the statute which would eliminate the word “actual,” and make a person suable before a justice of the peace only in the county where he can vote; yet his reasoning would lead to such result, and it is difficult to see how we could affirm this case without substantially so holding. But we must allow force to be given to every word of a statute, so far as it can be done consistently; and it not only can be done in this case, but, as we have already seen, there is a manifest reason for the use of the word “actual.”

The case of Bradley v. Fraser differs from the case at bar in this, that Bach, whose residence was drawn in issue, was not...