State v. Blum

• Decision Date: 08 June 1893
• Citation: 26 A. 861,55 N.J.L. 518
• Parties: STATE (JOY & SELIGER CO., Prosecutor) v. BLUM.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

26 A. 861

55 N.J.L. 518

STATE (JOY & SELIGER CO., Prosecutor)

v. BLUM.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 8, 1893.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari to court of common pleas, Essex county; Kirkpatrick, Buttner, and Led with, Judges.

Action by Isidore Blum against the Joy & Seliger Company for breach of contract. Plaintiff had judgment, and the state, at the prosecution of defendant, brings certiorari. Affirmed.

Argued February term, 1893, before VAN SYCKEL and GARRISON, JJ.

Frank E. Bradner, for plaintiff.

Louis Hood, for defendant.

VAN SYCKEL, J. This suit was instituted by Isidore Blum in the district court of Newark against the plaintiff in certiorari, a company incorporated under the laws of this state, to recover the sum of $200 for an alleged breach of contract of hiring. Blum recovered a judgment in the district court for the sum of $200, which was affirmed on appeal to the Essex pleas. This judgment has been certified into this court for review.

The first reason relied upon for reversal is that the district court had not jurisdiction to render a judgment for more than $100 against a corporation. The act establishing district courts in the city of Newark (Laws 1873, p. 245) confers upon them the civil jurisdiction exercised by justices of the peace under the act entitled "An act constituting courts for the trial of small causes," approved April 16, 1846, and the several supplements thereto. Under the act of 1846 a civil suit to recover $100 could have been brought against a corporation. By an act entitled "An act concerning district courts in this state created by special statute," approved March 20, 1878, (Supp. Revision, p. 265,) the jurisdiction of the district courts of Newark was extended to the sum of $200. The point made by the relator is that there has been no legislation expressly enlarging the jurisdiction of these district courts in respect to corporations, and that therefore the enlarging act does not apply to suits against corporate defendants. At the time said district courts were created, the court for the trial of small causes had jurisdiction, to the extent of $100, in suits by or against bodies politic or corporate, as well as those by or against individuals. Nix. Dig. 1861, p. 421, § 1; Id. p. 433, § 76. Prior, therefore, to the passage of the act of 1878, a suit could have been prosecuted in the district court by or against a corporation for a sum not in excess of $100. Jurisdiction was conferred upon the court as fully where the former, as where the latter, was a party. The limitation was as to the amount involved. When, therefore, the legislation of 1878 provided that the jurisdiction of the district court should be extended to every suit of a civil nature at law in which the debtor matter in dispute, exclusive of costs, did not exceed the sum of $200, without making any exception of parties, it was equivalent to an express declaration that, in every instance in which the court previously had jurisdiction to the extent of $100, it should thereafter have jurisdiction in double that sum. It included corporations as clearly as natural persons. Koch v. Vanderhoof, 49 N. J. Law, 619, 9 Atl. Rep. 771, does not support the relator's case. The conclusion of this court in that case is that, in statutes passed at various times between 1798 and 1878, the phrase "every suit of a civil nature at law" was intended not to include actions for statutory penalties, and that the same phrase, when used in the statutes of 1878 and 1882, must receive the like interpretation. The result was that the district court in which that suit was instituted had no jurisdiction over actions for statutory penalties beyond $100.

The...