People ex rel. Green v. Court of Appeals of Colorado

• Decision Date: 04 June 1900
• Citation: 27 Colo. 405,61 P. 592
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. GREEN v. COURT OF APPEALS OF COLORADO.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

61 P. 592

27 Colo. 405

PEOPLE ex rel. GREEN v. COURT OF APPEALS OF COLORADO.

Supreme Court of Colorado

June 4, 1900

Certiorari to court of appeals.

Certiorari by the people of the state of Colorado, on relation of Frederick I. Green, against the court of appeals of Colorado. Dismissed.

Henry T. Sale and Morgan Edgar, for petitioner.

Patterson Richardson & Hawkins, for respondent.

PER CURIAM.

This is a petition for a writ of certiorari to review a judgment of the court of appeals in the case of Eliza J. McKercher and others vs. Frederick I. Green, brought to that court on a writ of error to a judgment of the district court of Araphoe county. A proceeding in habeas corpus was instituted in the district court to determine the right to the custody of an infant child, as between the father and the immediate family of the deceased mother. The district court awarded the custody of the child to the father. The court of appeals reversed this judgment, and remanded the case to the district court, with instructions that a decree be entered dismissing the writ, and awarding the custody of the child to respondents, upon the ground that the best interests of the child would be thereby subserved. McKercher v. Green, 13 Colo.App. 270, 58 P. 406.

The grounds upon which the right to the writ is predicated are--First, that the court of appeals had no jurisdiction to review the judgment of the district court second, that, if it should be held that it had jurisdiction to review the judgment, it exceeded its jurisdiction, and greatly abused its discretion, in rendering the particular judgment it did render.

It is conceded that no appeal to, or writ of error from, this court would lie to review the judgment rendered by the district court in the first instance, and that, if reviewable at all on appeal or error, it was within the exclusive and final jurisdiction of the court of appeals, and the review now asked can only be had in the exercise of our 'general superintending control over all inferior courts,' lodged in the supreme court by section 2, art. 6, of the constitution, which reads as follows: 'The supreme Court except as otherwise provided in this constitution, shall have appellate jurisdiction only, which shall be co-extensive with the state, and shall have a general superintending control over all inferior courts, under such regulations and limitations as may be prescribed by law.'

We are directly called upon, in this and three other cases now pending, to lay down the rule which should govern us in the exercise of the power of 'superintending control' conferred upon us by the foregoing provision, in reference to the action and decisions of the court of appeals. It is strenuously insisted by some of the petitioners in these cases that it should be exercised in all cases where the court of appeals ignores or misconceives any well-settled rule of alw upon any given subject, or fails to regularly pursue the authority conferred upon it. We do not think that this is the intendment of this provision. As was said in People v. Richmond, 16 Colo. 278, 26 P. 933: 'It was not designed to secure the review of judgments in connection with ordinary appellate jurisdiction,' but 'it was rather, intended that the power thus lodged in the supreme court should be exercised only in special or extreme cases whose peculiar circumstances as to the facts, or the law governing the same, justify, in the opinion of this court, a resort to it.' In re Ingersoll, 50 La. Ann. 748, 23 So. 889...