Peck v. Powell

• Decision Date: 12 February 1890
• Parties: HAMILTON S. PECK v. E. HENRY POWELL
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

19 A. 227

62 Vt. 296

HAMILTON S. PECK v. E. HENRY POWELL

Supreme Court of Vermont

February 12, 1890

JANUARY TERM, 1890

It is adjudged that a writ of mandamus issue as prayed for in the petition, and that the petitioner recover his costs.

Hamilton S. Peck, pro se.

OPINION

TAFT

The petitioner is judge of the city court of the city of Burlington. The petitionee is state auditor. It is provided by section 2, No. 37, Acts of 1888, that in prosecutions for intoxication where the disclosure of the respondent is taken the justice or municipal court, before whom the prosecution is pending, shall be entitled to a fee of one dollar and fifty cents for "taking disclosure." The city court has jurisdiction of such cases, and the petitionee as state auditor has allowed the petitioner as city judge, for such service, in each case, the sum of one and fifty one-hundredths dollars and refuses to allow three dollars. The petitioner contends that he is entitled to the latter sum, for that the charter granted the city, under which the court is constituted, provides that, "in all cases * * * * before the city court, the city judge shall be entitled to tax and receive double the costs allowed by law to justices of the peace in suits or prosecutions before justices of the peace." Courts have been established in different places in the state, styled municipal courts, and the judges thereof, municipal judges. The petitionee insists that the term municipal in the act of 1888 is descriptive of, and applies to all inferior courts of towns and cities, and so includes the city court of Burlington. There would be more force to this claim were there no municipal courts by name. Then to give the word municipal any effect, there being no other consideration, it might be necessary to give it the broader meaning and to apply it to all inferior courts of our municipal organizations, there being none distinctively of the name municipal to which it could be applied, and nothing in the act to indicate that one class of the inferior courts instead of another, was intended. Of the inferior courts of the State there are justice, municipal, and city courts, and we think when an act contains a provision relating to a municipal court, referring to it in express terms by the name municipal, it means one distinctively of that name and nothing more. Any other construction would lead to confusion and bring the matter of the jurisdiction of the...