Dillon v. Superior Court

DRAPEAU, J. On June 10, 1949, petitioner commenced an action in the respondent court against Mary E. Dillon to recover money due him in the amount of $2,501. On October 1, 1949, an amendment to section 89 of the Code of Civil Procedure became effective whereby the jurisdiction of the municipal court was increased to include actions involving $3,000. When said cause came on for trial on April 3, 1950, the trial judge of his own motion transferred it to the municipal court upon the ground that respondent court did not have jurisdiction to try the same by reason of the amount involved.

[438]By the instant proceeding, petitioner seeks to annul the order- of transfer.

Respondents interposed a general demurrer to the petition, and here urge that the amendment to section 89, supra, divested respondent court of jurisdiction to try the action which involved less than $3,000.

Petitioner maintains that the jurisdiction of the superior court to try eases pending before it was not affected by the amendment, and relies upon the rule that a statute is not retroactive in operation unless the legislative intent to the contrary is clearly expressed.

There is nothing in the section here under consideration which discloses any intent to make it retrospective in its scope.

The identical question was before the court in Architectural Tile Co. v. Superior Court, 108 Cal.App. 369, 371 [291 P. 586], after the 1929 amendment to the Municipal Court Act became effective giving such court exclusive jurisdiction of “ (1) All eases at law in which the demand, exclusive of interest, or the value of the property in controversy, amounts to two thousand dollars, or less.”

It was there held that in eases of statutory change of jurisdiction, in the absence of a clearly expressed intention to the contrary, every statute will be held to operate prospectively rather than retrospectively. “It is much more reasonable and logical to assume that the legislature intended that the statute should have no effect upon pending litigation than to indulge in the presumption that they intended to deprive those litigants of their remedies whose actions were filed and against which the statute of limitations would have run except for their prior commencement. ’ ’