Sadler, Overseer of Poor v. Jeppson

• Decision Date: 21 February 1912
• Citation: 82 A. 316,82 N.J.L. 20
• Parties: SADLER, Overseer of Poor v. JEPPSON.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

82 A. 316

82 N.J.L. 20

SADLER, Overseer of Poor

v. JEPPSON.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Feb. 21, 1912.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Bastardy proceedings by one Sadler, Overseer of the Poor, against Adolph Jeppson. From a conviction and order of filiation, the defendant prosecutes certiorari. Affirmed.

Argued June term, 1911, before GARRISON, TRENCHARD, and KALISCH, JJ.

John J. Stamler, for prosecutor.

James C. Connolly, for defendant.

GARRISON, J. This writ of certiorari brings up the conviction of the prosecutor as putative father in bastardy proceedings and the order of filiation made against him.

The points urged by the prosecutor for the reversal of these orders are as follows:

1. That the police justice lost jurisdiction to make the orders by granting adjournments for a longer period than six weeks in all.

Assuming that section 7 of the bastardy act (P. L. 1898, p. 961) means what the prosecutor contends that it does, the irregularity was an error that affected the specific jurisdiction of the police justice (see Attorney General v. Sooy Oyster Co., 78 N. J. Law, 394, 75 Atl. 211); and hence the point should have been taken in the proceedings below. It was not, although the prosecutor was present during the trial. As it is, for all that appears, the adjournments were granted to the prosecutor.

2. The order that the prosecutor pay "the sum of ten dollars for costs and expenses of the confinement" is justified by the statute, in which "costs" means, not the costs of the action, but the cost of sustenance during confinement.

3. The death of the overseer of the poor, by whom the action was commenced, did not cause it to abate; it was brought, not in a personal, but in an official, capacity.

4. Assuming that the orders originally returned were defective, in that they did not set forth the evidence on which the conviction rested, the defect was cured by the further return made by the police justice in response to a rule upon him, obtained in accordance with the practice sanctioned by this court in Rahway v. Hunt, 74 N. J. Law, 116, 65 Atl. 164, and Eckerson v. Mitchell, 74 N. J. Law, 347, 68 Atl. 81.

The proceedings of the police justice are affirmed, with costs.