State Ex Rel. B. F. Goodrich Co. v. Trammell

• Decision Date: 17 November 1939
• Court: Florida Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE ex rel. B. F. GOODRICH CO. et al. v. TRAMMELL et al.

192 So. 175

140 Fla. 500

STATE ex rel. B. F. GOODRICH CO. et al. v. TRAMMELL et al.

Florida Supreme Court, Division B.

November 17, 1939

Original prohibition proceeding by the State of Florida, on the relation of the B. F. Goodrich Company, a New York corporation, authorized to do business in the state of Florida, and L. S. Brown, against Worth W. Trammell, H. F Atkinson, Paul D. Barns, and Arthur Gomez, as Circuit Judges of Dade County, Florida. Respondents filed a motion to quash the rule nisi and a demurrer to the petitions.

Demurrer sustained and rule nisi discharged.

COUNSEL

McKay, Dixon & DeJarnette, of Miami, for petitioners.

Knight & Green, of Miami, for respondents.

OPINION

BROWN Justice.

A common law action was instituted by Charles D. Hughes against the petitioners. The declaration alleged injury suffered by Hughes, due to the negligence of petitioners, The B. F Goodrich Co. and L. S. Brown, while he was employed at their place of business in Miami. Pleas to this declaration were filed by the petitioners, defendants below, setting up that the defendant corporation and complied with, and that the case was governed by, the Workmen's Compensation Act Acts 1935, c. 17481, and that the plaintiff was subject to said act, and had no right to sue in the Circuit Court, such court being without jurisdiction. Plaintiff filed replications to these pleas alleging failure on the part of the defendants to comply with the statute in several particulars, especially with reference to section 40 of the Act. After extended pleading, raising questions of law and fact which it was within the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court to rule upon and decide, subject of course to appellate review, issue was finally joined and the cause set down for trial.

Subsequently, but before the trial was had, petitioners made application to this Court for a writ of prohibition, alleging therein a lack of jurisdiction on the part of the Circuit Court to entertain or proceed further with the suit. A rule nisi was issued, and, thereafter, the respondents filed a motion to quash the rule nisi and a demurrer to the petitions or suggestion for the issuance of the writ.

The parties to this controversy have attempted to raise several questions relative to the interpretation of certain sections of the Workmen's Compensation Act, based on the pleadings in the case, and which were ruled upon by the Circuit Court, but this Court cannot at this time pass upon them, because they are not properly before this tribunal. For instance, the defendant corporation's pleas, setting up that they had complied with the requirements of the Workmen's Compensation Act and that plaintiff's only remedy was under that act, and that he could only proceed against the defendant before the Florida Industrial Commission, were denied by the plaintiff, and even though the said pleas be good on their face (and the trial court held that some of them were), plaintiff would have to prove them in order to conclusively show that the Circuit Court was without jurisdiction. It may be that some one or more of plaintiff's replications to defendant's pleas should have been held bad on demurrer, but they were submitted to the trial court to rule upon, and if he ruled erroneously, defendant had its remedy by writ of error. The questions presented here are to such a large extent questions of fact (alleged but not yet proven), as well as of law, that lack of jurisdiction is not made conclusively to appear.

We have repeatedly held that the writ of prohibition is that process by which an inferior court is restrained by a superior court from usurping jurisdiction over parties or subject matter with which it has not been vested by law, or when action is threatened which would be in excess of and beyond its jurisdiction. It is an extraordinary writ and is issued only when the party seeking it is without other and adequate means of redress for the wrong about to be perpetrated by such threatened non-jurisdictional action of the lower tribunal. State ex rel. Reynolds v. Malone, 40 Fla. 129, 23 So. 575; Crill v. State Road Dept., 96 Fla. 110, 117 So. 795, 796; Curtis v. Albritton, 101 Fla. 853, 132 So. 677; State ex rel. Cacciatore v. Drumbright, 116 Fla. 496, 156 So. 721, 97 A.L.R. 154; Walters v. Blanton, 126 Fla. 428, 171 So. 230.

The writ of prohibition is never allowed to usurp the functions of an appeal, writ of error or certiorari. See authorities, supra.

The circuit courts of the State of Florida are courts of general jurisdiction--similar to the Court of King's Bench in England--clothed with most generous powers under the Constitution, which are beyond the competency of the legislature to curtail. Ex Parte Henderson, 6...