Knight v. Quincy, Omaha & Kansas City Railroad

96 S.W. 716, 120 Mo. App. 311, 1906 Mo. App. LEXIS 401
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 1, 1906
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 96 S.W. 716 (Knight v. Quincy, Omaha & Kansas City Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Knight v. Quincy, Omaha & Kansas City Railroad, 96 S.W. 716, 120 Mo. App. 311, 1906 Mo. App. LEXIS 401 (Mo. Ct. App. 1906).

Opinion

JOHNSON, J.

Action against a common carrier to recover damages for an alleged wrongful refusal to receive and transport a hog offered by plaintiff for shipment. Plaintiff had judgment in the sum of two dollars compensatory and $63 exemplary damages and defendant appealed. The suit was brought in the circuit court and in the petition plaintiff alleged in substance that he brought the animal properly crated and in good condition, to defendant’s station at Trenton and [318]*318requested defendant’s agent to ship it to Green City, another station on defendant’s line some forty miles east of Trenton, and that defendant not only wrongfully refused to receive and ship the property but intentionally committed the wrong in an insulting manner. Actual damages were laid at two dollars which plaintiff prayed to have trebled under the provision of section 1110, Revised Statutes 1899, and plaintiff further prayed for the recovery of a reasonable attorney fee, to-wit, fity dollars, to be taxed as costs as provided by said section of the statutes. The right to the remedy invoked was based on the violation of the statutory duty imposed on common carriers by section 1082,. Revised Statutes 1899.

In the answer filed by defendant to this petition among other defenses the jurisdiction of the court over the subject-matter was attacked on the ground that the amount of plaintiff’s demand was but six dollars — the treble damages claimed — that the attorney’s fee claimed was no part of the demand but should be regarded as costs, and therefore the court had no original jurisdiction over the cause, the amount involved being less than fifty dollars. [Sec. 1671, R. S. 1899.] Plaintiff then-filed an amended petition containing two counts. In the first the cause of action stated was the same as that pleaded in the original petition, but the amount of the attorney’s fee was changed to $150. In the second the facts stated were a repetition of those stated in the first count and in the original petition, but the cause was founded on a breach of the common-law duty of defendant as a common carrier and the relief sought included compensatory damages amounting to two dollars and exemplary damages laid at $150. The right to recover damages of the latter class was predicated on the allegation that defendant “contemptuously, insolently, wrongfully and maliciously refused” to receive and ship the property.

[319]*319Defendant moved to- strike out the second count on the grounds, among others, that the cause pleaded therein differed essentially from that pleaded in the original petition and therefore was not a proper amendment and that as the court had no jurisdiction over the subject-matter of the original action, none could be acquired through an amendment thereof. This motion was overruled and defendant filed answer to the merits in which the objection to the jurisdiction of the court was repeated. In the instructions given on behalf of plaintiff the first count was abandoned and judgment was recovered on the second count alone. The objections made in the motion to strike out Avere reiterated in the motions for a neAv trial and in arrest of judgment, and are urged by defendant as grounds for a reversal of the judgment.

In a civil action for the recovery of money, whether such action be founded upon contract or tort or be for the recovery of a penalty given by statute, the circuit court has no jurisdiction over the cause unless the sum demanded, exclusive of interest and costs, exceeds fifty dollars. [Sec. 1674, R. S. 1899; Barnes v. Railway, 119 Mo. App. 303; Bradley v. Asher, 65 Mo. App. 589; Bay v. Trusdell, 92 Mo. App, 377.]

In the original action the amount of the damages claimed by plaintiff Avhen trebled fell below the jurisdictional sum, but it is argued by plaintiff that section 1140 of the statutes enabled him to recover a reasonable attorney’s fee in an action founded on a violation of the duty imposed on common carriers by section 1082, and notwithstanding the statute provides that the attorney’s fee shall be taxed and collected as a part of the costs in the case, such fee is in the nature of a penalty for the wrong committed, and being a part of the penalty he is entitled to' recover, necessarily must be considered as a part of his demand. From this premise the conclusion is drawn that the penalty demanded by plaintiff included [320]*320his actual damages trebled, and his attorney’s fee, and as these two amounts aggregated $56, the circuit court had original jurisdiction over the cause. In Perkins v. Railway, 103 Mo. 52, the Supreme Court decided that a statutory provision similar to that under consideration should not be condemned as being special legislation, and observed, “the statute in question is as much a police regulation as is the double-damage section, and the attorney’s fee may be lawfully imposed as a penalty for the violation of the law.” And in Briggs v. Railway Company, 111 Mo. 168, the same court again treated the attorney’s fee as a part of the penalty imposed for the wrongdoing, saying that “the fact the amount is taxed as costs and is called an attorney’s fee does not change its real character,” and held the defendant was entitled to a jury trial in the assessment of the value of the legal services. But in the later case of Paddock v. Railway, 155 Mo. 524, the Supreme Court, following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Gulf, etc., Railway v. Ellis, 165 U. S. 150, held the provision for the recovery of an attorney’s fee in an action of this character to be in conflict with the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and therefore void, and overruled the Perkins case. In thus holding that the legislative attempt to burden a certain class of ' unsuccessful litigants with the payment of their adversaries’ attorney’s fees was an attempt to deprive them of their property without due process of law, and to single them out as the subjects of class legislation, the view previously entertained that the attorney’s fee should be treated as a part .of the penalty imposed for the violation of a statutory duty, necessarily had to be abandoned. To compel the losing party to a suit to pay his opponent’s attorney’s fee doubtless should be regarded as the imposition of a penalty, but it is a penalty inflicted for resisting the payment of a legal demand and in no sense [321]*321belongs to the remedy provided as a redress for the wrong upon which the demand is founded. When plaintiff’s canse of action accrued, under the statute, the only penalty he was entitled to receive was his treble damages. Being compelled to bring suit to enforce his demand, the contingent penalty of an attorney’s fee which the statute attempted to give him, regardless of the constitutional question involved, should not be considered a part of the demand inuring to him from the tort committed, and therefore should not be included in the amount necessary to confer jurisdiction upon the circuit court.

The term “the sum demanded exclusive of interest and costs,” as employed in section 1674, obviously refers to the amount of the remedy sought under the cause asserted and excludes incidental matters such as costs or other expenses incurred in the prosecution of the suit. We have not overlooked our decision in the case of Bay v. Trusdell, 92 Mo. App.

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Bluebook (online)
96 S.W. 716, 120 Mo. App. 311, 1906 Mo. App. LEXIS 401, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/knight-v-quincy-omaha-kansas-city-railroad-moctapp-1906.