Gardner v. Superior Court

SHAW, J.

This is an application for a writ of prohibition to prevent the superior court, sitting as a juvenile court of

[549]

Los Angeles county, from proceeding further in the trial of an action wherein the people of the state constitute the plaintiff and the petitioners are defendants. The action was instituted by filing a verified complaint in said court charging petitioners with the commission of the misdemeanor defined by section 26 of the juvenile court act (Stats. 1911, p. 672). The right to the writ is based upon the claim that the verified complaint filed in the superior court was insufficient to give the court jurisdiction to try petitioners for the offense charged therein.

Section 26 of the juvenile court act, which defines the misdemeanor in question, provides that “the juvenile court shall have jurisdiction of all such misdemeanors.” Section 682 of the Penal Code provides: “Every public offense must be prosecuted by indictment or information, except: 1. Where proceedings are had for the removal of civil officers of the state. 2. Offenses arising in the militia when in actual service, and in the land and naval forces in time of war, or which the state may keep, with the consent of Congress, in time of peace. 3. Offenses tried in justices and police courts. 4. All misdemeanors of which jurisdiction has been conferred upon superior courts sitting as juvenile courts.” Subdivision 4 was added by the amendment of 1911. It is under and by virtue of this last subdivision of section 682 that respondents claim the right to prosecute the petitioners upon the complaint filed in the superior court. Petitioners, however, contend that the exception provided by subdivision 4 is unconstitutional, in that it is repugnant to subdivisions 3 and 33 of section 25, article IV of the constitution, which provide: “The legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated eases, that is to say: . . . Third. Regulating the practice of courts of justice. . . . Thirty-third. In all other cases where a general law can be made applicable.” While section 682 provides that every public offense, except those enumerated in subdivisions 1, 2, 3 and 4, must be prosecuted by indictment or information, it does not make, or purport to make, any provision for the prosecution of cases falling within the enumerated exceptions. The section is permissive in declaring that such prosecutions need not be by indictment or information, but it does not in terms forbid the same, or define any other mode of practice for the cases so excepted.