State v. Landis

• Decision Date: 07 July 1913
• Citation: 158 S.W. 883
• Parties: STATE ex rel. INGENBOHS v. LANDIS, Probate Judge, et al.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

158 S.W. 883

STATE ex rel. INGENBOHS v. LANDIS, Probate Judge, et al.

Springfield Court of Appeals. Missouri.

July 7, 1913.

COURTS (§ 475) — PROHIBITION (§ 10) — CONCURRENT JURISDICTION — PROBATE COURT'S INTERFERENCE WITH JURISDICTION ACQUIRED BY COURT OF APPEALS.

Where one court has lawfully assumed jurisdiction over a given case, other courts of concurrent jurisdiction in that matter must not interfere;

and hence, where the Court of Appeals on habeas corpus had jurisdiction to determine the competency and fitness of the relator to have the custody of his infant child, an order of the probate court, on a petition asking that he be adjudged incompetent and not a suitable person for the custody of the child, necessarily based upon a determination of the same issue, was a nullity, as to which this court would award a writ of prohibition.

Original petition for prohibition by the State of Missouri, on the relation of George Ingenbohs, against Chas. M. Landis, Judge of the Probate Court of Barry County, and another. Peremptory writ awarded.

Lehmann & Lehmann, of St. Louis, for relator. W. Cloud, of Pierce City, for respondents.

FARRINGTON, J.

This is an original proceeding in this court to obtain a writ of prohibition to prevent the judge of the probate court of Barry county, Mo., from further entertaining jurisdiction of a certain cause pending in the court over which he presides, and grows out of a controversy concerning the custody of the minor child of George Ingenbohs, the facts of which controversy are detailed in an opinion this day handed down by this court in a cause entitled Ex parte Alberta Antoinette Ingenbohs, 158 S. W. 878. By reading the opinion in that case, it will be found that this court, on March 13, 1913, at the instance of George Ingenbohs, father of the minor child, issued a writ of habeas corpus, commanding Catherine Conley and Bernard Conley to have before this court at a certain named date the body of said minor child. After the writ of habeas corpus was served, Catherine Conley appeared in the probate court of Barry county with a petition asking that George Ingenbohs, the father of the minor child, "be adjudged incompetent, and not a suitable person to have the care and custody of said minor." The probate court found that George Ingenbohs was incompetent and unfit to have the care and custody of his infant child, and appointed Catherine Conley, its maternal grandmother, as its guardian. The proceeding in the probate court...