State v. Woodside

• Decision Date: 02 May 1905
• Citation: 87 S.W. 8,112 Mo. App. 451
• Parties: STATE ex rel. WOODSIDE v. WOODSIDE.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

87 S.W. 8

112 Mo. App. 451.

STATE ex rel. WOODSIDE v. WOODSIDE.

St. Louis Court of Appeals. Missouri.

May 2, 1905.

INTERPRETATION OF STATUTES — EQUITABLE DOCTRINE — CIRCUIT COURT STENOGRAPHERS — ALLOWANCE FOR EXPENSES — RAILROAD FARE — PAYMENT IN WORK.

1. The doctrine of equitable interpretation of statutes has been abandoned.

2. Under Sess. Acts 1903, pp. 270, 271, providing that every official stenographer of a circuit court, in counties having 45,000 inhabitants or less, shall be allowed all sums of money actually expended by him in necessary hotel and traveling expenses while engaged in attending any term of court at any place in the circuit in which he is appointed, or while engaged in going to and from any such place for the purposes of attending such terms of court, and that such necessary expenses shall include nothing except actual traveling fare, etc., an official stenographer is not entitled to allowance for railroad fare paid by him in work for the attorney of the road.

Mandamus by the state, on the relation of one Woodside, against L. B. Woodside. Writ denied.

Opinion.

GOODE, J.

This is an original proceeding in which a writ of mandamus is prayed against the defendant as judge of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit. An alternative writ was waived. The plaintiff is the official stenographer of that circuit. He resides at Salem, in Dent county, and in the course of official duty attended the August term, 1903, and the February and August terms, 1904, of the circuit court of Laclede county. His route was over the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad from Salem to Lebanon, a distance of 135 miles. The regular railroad fare for the journey is $4.40, and his expenditure for the three terms would have been $26.40. Laclede county has less than 45,000 inhabitants. It is averred that the regular fare ($26.40) which the plaintiff would have had to pay, but for the facts hereinafter stated, in attending said terms of the Laclede county circuit court, did not exceed the sum of $2 a day for the time he was in attendance on said court. Relator actually paid no money for railroad fare, because he had made an arrangement with the attorney of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad Company, who attends to the legal business of said company within the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, by which it was agreed that if the relator would do all the stenographic work said attorney might require to be done for and in behalf of said railroad company during each term of court within said circuit, and prepare for the use of said attorney a copy of the transcript of the evidence in all appeals taken by said company, said attorney would furnish the relator...