Ruff v. Kebler

• Decision Date: 13 June 1898
• Citation: Ruff v. Kebler, 62 N.J.L. 186, 40 A. 626 (N.J. 1898)
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court
• Parties: CHRISTIAN I. RUFF v. FRANK KEBLER, OVERSEER OF THE POOR IN THE TOWNSHIP OF DELRAN

40 A. 626

62 N.J.L. 186

STATE (RUFF, Prosecutor)

v. KEBLER, Overseer of the Poor.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 13, 1898.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari to court of general quarter sessions, Burlington county; Gaskill, Judge.

Certiorari by the state, on the prosecution of Christian I. Ruff, against Frank Kebler, overseer of the poor in the township of Delran, to review a judgment. Affirmed.

Argued February term, 1898, before COLLINS and DIXON, JJ.

Gilbert & Atkinson, for prosecutor.

Eckard P. Budd, for defendant.

DIXON, J. This certiorari brings up proceedings under the act for the maintenance of bastard children (1 Gen. St. p. 141), which were initiated by an application to a justice of the peace in the county of Burlington, and completed by the judgment of the court of general quarter sessions in that county on the appeal of the present prosecutor. With regard to the first four reasons assigned for reversal, it is enough to say that by the express terms of the statute any justice of the peace of the county wherein the mother may be can acquire jurisdiction of the proceedings, and that the complaint in this case was made before the justice by the mother herself, and avers that the child was born in and chargeable to the township of Delran, in the county of Burlington. The evidence on the trial tended to prove that that township was the place of the mother's legal settlement when the child was born, and was likely to be charged with its support. These circumstances warranted the application by the overseer of that township, and maintained the jurisdiction of the justice and the quarter sessions. Certainly, lack of jurisdiction in the sessions is not affirmatively shown by the record, and in such cases...