Folkner v. Dorland

• Decision Date: 09 June 1892
• Citation: 24 A. 403,54 N.J.L. 409
• Parties: FOLKNER v. DORLAND.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

24 A. 403

54 N.J.L. 409

FOLKNER

v. DORLAND.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 9, 1892.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to circuit court, Warren county; before Justice Scudder.

Suit by George H. Dorland against William C. Folkner. Verdict for plaintiff. Defendant's motion for new trial was denied, and he brings error. Writ of error dismissed.

Argued June term, 1892, before the Chief Justice, and Depue, Van Syckel, and Scudder, JJ.

Henry S. Harris, for plaintiff in error.

Joseph M. Roseberry, for defendant in error.

BEASLEY, C. J. This was a suit brought in the circuit court of the county of Warren, and it was there tried, and a verdict rendered for the plaintiff. Whereupon a rule to show cause why a new trial should not be granted was entered, and the motion having been heard upon the case made at the trial, and upon certain supplementary testimony, a new trial was refused. These are the proceedings and decision that are now pending before this court, they having been brought here by a writ of error. This course has been taken, and is supposed to be justifiable, by virtue of an act of the legislature enacted in the year 1890: and the first question to be decided, and which meets us at the threshold of our inquiry, is with respect to the legality of that statute. Upon examination of the subject, my conclusion is that the legislation in question is void from the fact that its title does not express its object. It purports to be a supplement to the act entitled "An act respecting writs of error." The infirmity of this description is that it cannot, with the least show of reason, be so construed as to comprehend the process which it attempts to authorize. The act does, indeed, designate such process a "writ of error;" but that does not make it such. Besides, in view of the constitutional prescription, such new-fangled process, thus sought to be instituted, must have been true, and at the time of the passage of the law of the nature of a writ of error, or the title was grossly illusive. The process contrived by this law has for its function the removal of decisions founded on blended low and fact,—a function that in no sense appertains to writs of error, whose sole ability always has been and is to bring before the higher court, for review in matters of law, the judgments of inferior jurisdictions. Most plainly the procedure before us is an appeal, and not one in error. The criterion in these cases is to ascertain, as closely as practicable, what...