Kinser v. St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co.
Kinser v. St. Louis Southwestern Railway Co.
Opinion of the Court
Bloomfield is the county seat of Stoddard county. The general assembly by act, approved March 16, 1895, provided that two terms a year of the circuit court of Stoddard county be held at the town of Dexter, in said county, in addition to the biannual terms to be held at Bloomfield. The act creating the Dexter court provides that “no civil case commenced and made returnable at one of said places (Dexter or Bloomfield), shall be transferred to the other of said places, except by the written consent of the parties to such case, or the order of the judge of said court upon good cause shown.”
This suit was begun before a justice of the peace, and appealed from his judgment to the circuit court,
“J. D.Kinser,
v.
St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company.
►Appeal from justice’s court.
Now come the parties, by their respective attorneys, and by agreement of the parties herein, this cause is sent to Dexter branch of this court for trial, and it is ordered that the files herein be transmitted "by the clerk to said court.”
•Which objection being sustained, plaintiff (appellant) to.ok a nonsuit with leave to move to set the same aside. This motion he filed in due time, which was overruled, and he brings his case here by appeal.
■ The provisions made for the transferrence of cases from one of these places to the other, is for the accommodation of litigants and to facilitate the business of the Stoddard circuit court. The court may for good cause order the transfer made. We apprehend that this clause places • it largely in the ■ discretion of the court to make such an order, in any case or number of cases. A crowded state of the docket, the inability of the court to finish the call of the docket, at one of these places, within the time allotted to hold such term, and the probability of time to try the uncalled cases at the term to be next held at the other place, or any other cause, which the court should, in its judgment, deem sufficient, would authorize such an order. An abuse of this discretion could be made, but that abuse could not be corrected by an objection to the introduction of testimony upon a trial, as was done in this case. The court would not lose its jurisdiction of a case by indiscreetly or wrongfully transferring it from one of these places to the other, for the reason that the cause would still be pending in the same court and have the same venue. We are clearly of the opin
The judgment is reversed and cause remanded, with directions to the lower court to set aside its judgment of nonsuit and grant the plaintiff a new trial. It is so ordered.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.