Whittington v. Hall

Stockbridge, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In the latter part of 1906 or in 1907, Charles L. Whittington sold to the Wm. J. Hall Manufacturing Company ⁴⁶⁸ all the timber on a piece of land in Somerset county, and gave the purchaser five years in which to cut and remove it. On March 10th, 1908, Charles L. Whittington sold and conveyed to W. Benj.

Whittington, the appellant, the land on which the timber sold to Hall was growing. Having thus acquired the land, the appellant cut and removed, and perhaps sold some of the growing timber, estimated at a little over two thousand feet, whereupon the Wm. J. Hall Co. brought suit against W. Benjamin Whittington before a magistrate for $20.27, as the value of the lumber so cut by him. To the suit thus instituted the defendant, appellant here, appeared and filed an affidavit that title to land was involved, and moved to quash the proceeding for the reason that the magistrate was without jurisdiction to hear the case.

The motion was overruled, and a judgment rendered for the plaintiff, from which an appeal was taken to the Circuit Court of the county, where the motion to quash was renewed upon the same ground. Upon the denial of the motion an appeal was taken to this Court. In the Circuit Court on appeal four exceptions were attempted to be taken. The judge refused to sign them, but the case comes up on the certificate of the learned judge who heard the case.

This procedure is in conformity with the method indicated by this Court as proper, when it is desired to have this Court review the question of the jurisdiction of justices of the peace in civil cases. Josselson v. Sonneborn, 110 Md. 546 . There is presented by the present record but a single question, the jurisdiction of magistrates in civil causes like that appearing in the record in this case, under the terms of Article 52, section 8, .of the Code of Public General Laws. This Court has frequently had before it the question of the jurisdiction of justices of the peace, arising in case,? involving a construction of Article 52, section 7, but none depending solely upon the construction of section 8. ⁴⁶⁹ The latter section reads as follows: “If the defendant in an action before a Justice of the Peace for cutting, destroying or carrying away timber or wood to or from any land in this State, or for doing any other injury to such lands, shall allege in writing that he claims title to said lands, or that he acted under a person claiming title to the same, whom he shall name in such allegation, and shall verify said allegation by oath, tlie justice shall take no further cognizance of the case.” If this is to be construed to mean that in any action before a magistrate for cutting, destroying or carrying away timber or wood, the defendant has it in his power to oust the jurisdiction of the justice by simply