Opinion

Brown v. Alabama Great Southern Railroad

  • 87 Ala. 370
Court
Supreme Court of Alabama
Filed
Dec 15, 1888
Status
Published
Author
Stone
On the bench
Stone
Cited by
9 cases
Authority
More cited than 90.2%

The opinion

STONE, C. J.

Our decisons are uniform, that under our constitution and statutes, the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, in cases of tort, is limited to fifty dollars. This is the language of the general statute.—Code of 1886, § 839; Taylor v. Woods, 52 Ala. 474 ; Burns v. Henry, 67 Ala. 209 ; Carter v. Alford, 64 Ala. 236 ; Rodgers v. Gaines, 73 Ala. *372 218 ; Alabama Great Southern Railroad Co. v. Christian, 82 Ala. 307 .

In the Code of 1886; § 1149, is the following provision: “A justice of the peace has jurisdiction of all actions for injury to, or destruction of stock, by the locomotive or cars of a railroad, if the sum in controversy does not exceed one hundred dollars.” We have thus the naked inquiry, whether the constitutions, Federal and State, permit the legislature to discriminate between railroad corporations and other persons, natural or artificial, in the matter of the jurisdiction of an inferior tribunal; or, in other words, whether it is competent for the legislature to limit a justice’s jurisdiction to fifty dollars, in suits against tort-feasors generally, and to enlarge it to one hundred dollars, when a railroad corporation is the offender. Our former rulings compel us to declare section 1149 of the Code of 1886 to be unconstitutional. S. & N. R. R. Co. v. Morris, 65 Ala. 193 ; Zeigler v. S. & N. R. R. Co., 58 Ala. 594 ; Smith v. L. & N. R. R. Co., 75 Ala. 449 ; Mayor v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 53 Ala. 570 ; Green v. State, 73 Ala. 26 .

The judgment of the Circuit Court is affirmed.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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