State ex rel. Neyland v. Read

• Decision Date: 30 May 1898
• Docket Number: 12,839,12,840
• Citation: 50 La.Ann. 445,23 So. 715
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE EX REL. MARY L. NEYLAND v. STEPHEN D. READ, JUDGE TWELFTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF CALCASIEU, AND R. L. BELDEN, PLAINTIFF

23 So. 715

50 La.Ann. 445

STATE EX REL. MARY L. NEYLAND v. STEPHEN D. READ, JUDGE TWELFTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF CALCASIEU, AND R. L. BELDEN, PLAINTIFF

Nos. 12,839, 12,840

Supreme Court of Louisiana

May 30, 1898

Submitted May 21, 1898.

ON APPLICATION for writs of Mandamus and Certiorari.

A. R Mitchell, for Relatrix.

Thomas Kleinpeter and R. L. Belden, for Respondents.

OPINION

BREAUX, J.

Robert L. Belden sued the relator on a balance claimed as being due by her. The suit was brought before the magistrate of the Third Ward of Calcasieu.

The relator answered, and pleaded in reconvention an amount exceeding three hundred dollars.

Her demand in reconvention was dismissed for want of jurisdiction. The court pronounced judgment for plaintiff Belden in the sum of fifty-five dollars and fifty cents. The defendant, the relator here, appealed to the District Court.

The relator further sets forth in her application for a mandamus that five days afterward, before the same magistrate, the same plaintiff brought another suit against her for the sum of one hundred dollars for damages, to which she pleaded denying any indebtedness to him.

Judgment was pronounced against her for the amount plaintiff claimed.

She appealed to the District Court from this judgment.

The relator avers that another, a third suit was brought against her by plaintiff seven days after the second suit, in which he claimed and recovered contradictorily with her in the same court the sum of one hundred dollars for a fee of attorney.

The relator alleged that each amount was due, if due at all, at the date the first suit was instituted and she asserts that separate suits were brought in order to deprive her from a trial by jury.

The relator avers that on appeal she made a deposit of twelve dollars as a jury fee, and prayed for trial by jury.

In this court a rule nisi was granted. In answer to the rule the respondent returned:

That no application had been made for a trial by jury before the magistrate court.

That his own court acting as an appellate tribunal not vested with original jurisdiction could not grant to the relator rights to which she would not have been entitled in the court below.

Lastly it was urged that the complaint of a division of the demands and the consequent three suits, instead of one suit, is one which should have been raised in the magistrate's court.

The prayer for a trial by jury presents the serious question for our determination.

In appeals from the magistrates' courts to the District Courts, the District Court is exclusively a court of appeals. The case comes up de novo, it is true, but we take it that the words apply to the issues of the case to be reviewed on appeal. New issues may be raised. They are, however, to be tried by the appellate tribunal without a jury.

In our judgment they are to be reviewed as issues on appeal, and not to be regarded as if originally presented for consideration before the District Court.

The jurisdiction extends to the adjudication by the appellate court without a jury, of the law and the facts arising on appeal.

The right to trial by jury is given in civil cases before the courts exercising original jurisdiction and not in appellate courts.

We are not...