Reese v. Hawks

Ritchie, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This suit was instituted in the Court of Common Pleas on two promissory notes, each for the principal sum of fifty dollars. By computing interest from the date of their maturity to the institution of the suit, the whole amount recoverable is over one hundred dollars. On a plea to the jurisdiction because the debt claimed, excluding the interest, did not exceed one hundred dollars there was judgment of non pros.

Whether such a plea was well-founded, is the sole question presented by this appeal. Before considering what jurisdiction the Constitution confers upon the Court of Common Pleas, it is pertinent to state that the plaintiff could not have maintained a suit for the principal and interest of his claim before a justice of the peace. It is well settled that the test of jurisdiction in actions ex contractu is not the amount claimed, but the amount recovered. It is also well-settled that interest “ is recoverable as of right, upon contracts in writing to pay money upon a day certain, as upon bills of exchange, promissory notes,” &c.

Balto. City Pass. Railway Co. vs. Sewell, 37 Md., 452 . As the plaintiff was therefore entitled to recover the interest accrued upon the principal of his claim as well as the principal itself, the amount of his judgment, if obtained, would have been in excess of the jurisdiction of a justice of the' peace, which by the ¹³² statute and judicial construction is limited to one hundred dollars.

As a judgment, where the principal of the debt-is not over one hundred dollars, but the amount recoverable exceeds that sum by reason of interest, cannot be rendered by a magistrate, the right of recovery on a debt, of this nature must be conferred on some other tribunal otherwise the anomaly would be presented of a creditor with such a claim being wholly without remedy; a consequence which could not have been intended by the framers, of our organic law. Presuming that no such casus omissus exists as that of' a creditor having a claim too large to be sued on before a justicé of the peace, and not large enough to be sued on any where else, we shall now inquire where the jurisdiction is lodged in which judgment on such a claim may be recovered. The language of the Constitution of 1861 material to. our present inquiry, found in sec. 28 of Art. 4, is as follows : “The Superior Court of Baltimore City, the Court of Common Pleas and the Baltimore City Court shall each have concurrent jurisdiction in all civil common law cases,, and, concurrently, all the jurisdiction which the Superior-Court of Baltimore City and the Court of Common Pleas, now have, except,” &c. — The exceptions enumerated are not material to the present question further than to note that they do not embrace a case like the present. Whatever jurisdiction, therefore, the Superior Court, and the Court of Common Pleas were respectively exercising in civil common law cases when the present Constitution was adopted, which was, of course, the jurisdiction conferred on them by the Constitution of 1864, was by the Constitution of 186⁷ conferred upon those two Courts and the Baltimore City Court; subject to certain exceptions which, as intimated, need not here be considered.

What was the jurisdiction conferred on the first named two Courts by the Constitution of 1864, appears from sec ¹³³ tions 33 and 34 of Article 4 of that instrument. Section 33 declares: “ The Superior Court of Baltimore City shall have jurisdiction over all suits where the debt or damage ■claimed, exclusive of interest, shall exceed the sum of one thousand dollars * * * and in all other civil cases not hereinafter assigned to the Court of Common Pleas,” &c. The succeeding section, 34, declares: “The Court of Common Pleas shall have civil jurisdiction in all suits where the debt or damages claimed, exclusive of interest, •shall he over one hundred dollars and shall not exceed one thousand dollars.” By section 34 the Court of Common Pleas was not vested with jurisdiction to try a case like the present; nor was the Superior Court so vested