Jones v. Justice's Court

The Court. The petitioner herein applied to the court below for a writ of review, and judgment was entered in her favor, directing the appellant to vacate and set aside a judgment entered in the justice’s court of Los Angeles City on the fourth day of June, 1891, in favor of one Brosseau, and against petitioner, Ellen Jones. The ground upon which the petitioner herein asked for the writ was, that neither she nor her attorney ever had [524]any notice that the case pending in the justice’s court had been set for trial, and the learned judge of the court below sustained the petitioner’s contention in that regard, and granted the writ prayed for.

Section 850 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that “ when all the parties served with process shall have appeared, or some of them have appeared, and the remaining defendants have made default, the justice must fix a day for the trial of said cause, and notify the plaintiff and the defendants who have appeared thereof.” Appellant contends that the justice having acquired jurisdiction, the failure to notify the defendant of the time fixed for trial was mere error which could have been corrected only upon appeal. We do not think the contention a sound one. Justices’ courts have peculiar and limited jurisdiction, and the powers conferred upon them by the statute must be strictly pursued. The statute requiring notice of the day fixed for trial to be given is imperative, and it is just and right that it should be strictly enforced, because no man should be deprived of his property without notice and opportunity to be heard. It was the intention of the legislature to relieve parties to actions in a justice’s court from the necessity of making daily inquiry at the justice’s office to learn when the case is to be tried.

We do not think the cases cited by the appellant are opposed to the views we have expressed. Clark v. Superior Court, 55 Cal. 199, was an application for a writ of prohibition to annul an order of the superior court dated April 13, 1880, directing the clerk of the court to file a decision and judgment made by the judge of the district court on December 26,1879. All the case decides is, that where the superior court has acquired jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject-matter, a judgment based upon findings made by the district court after a trial therein, but not filed until after the district judge went out of office, is merely erroneous. Weimmer v. Sutherland, 74 Cal. 341, decides that a justice’s court has no power to review its own judgment, unless stat[525]