White v. Primm

• Decision Date: 31 January 1865
• Citation: 36 Ill. 416,1865 WL 2760
• Parties: COLLINS D. WHITEv.THOMAS J. PRIMM.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

36 Ill. 416

1865 WL 2760 (Ill.)

COLLINS D. WHITE

v.THOMAS J. PRIMM.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

January Term, 1865.

ERROR to Circuit Court of Sangamon County.

The case is sufficiently stated in the opinion.

N. M. Broadwell, for plaintiff in error.

W. H. Herndon, for defendant in error.

LAWRENCE, J.

This was an action brought upon a judgment rendered by a justice of the peace in St. Louis, Missouri. Besides other material stipulations in the record is the following: “It is admitted in this case that justices of the peace in the state of Missouri have jurisdiction as in this record specified and done.” We have found some difficulty in determining in what sense this agreement was made by the parties. If intended as an admission that the justice had jurisdiction both of the parties and the subject matter, it would dispose of the case. We cannot, however, understand it in this sense, because the question of jurisdiction is the only point made in the briefs submitted to us by counsel, and seems to have been the only question in the court below. Evidence was heard on both sides in regard to the question as to whether the justice acquired jurisdiction of the person.

Again, if the agreement means merely that the justice had jurisdiction to render a judgment for the amount here claimed, the case would be free from difficulty. For the return of the Missouri constable upon the summons was that he had served it “by leaving a copy at the usual place of abode of the defendant, with a white member of the family above the age of fourteen years.” But as no intendments are indulged in favor of courts of limited and inferior jurisdiction, and as this is a mode of service unknown to the common law, in the absence of the above stipulation, we should say that this return furnished no evidence that the justice acquired jurisdiction, without proof in the court below that this mode of service was authorized by the Missouri statute.

We presume, however, that the parties designed to be understood as agreeing that justices in Missouri had jurisdiction to the amount of the judgment, and that this mode of service is recognized by the laws of Missouri, leaving it an open question as to whether the service was in fact made; that is, whether the return of the officer was true.

The summons under which the judgment was rendered in St. Louis purports to have been served on the 4th of March, 1856. The defendant below proved, by various witnesses, that he had been a...