Starck v. Chicago & North Western Railway Co.

123 N.E.2d 826, 4 Ill. 2d 611, 1954 Ill. LEXIS 301
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 20, 1954
DocketNo. 33332
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 123 N.E.2d 826 (Starck v. Chicago & North Western Railway Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Starck v. Chicago & North Western Railway Co., 123 N.E.2d 826, 4 Ill. 2d 611, 1954 Ill. LEXIS 301 (Ill. 1954).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Schaefer

delivered the opinion of the court:

Pauline B. Starck, administratrix of the estate of her husband, William Ernest Starck, deceased, brought this action under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act in the municipal court of Evanston against the defendant, the Chicago and North Western Railway Company. Judgment was entered upon a verdict for plaintiff in the sum of $54,300. Defendant appeals directly to this court because a construction of the constitution and the validity of a statute are involved.

The defendant’s first contention is that the municipal court of Evanston was without jurisdiction. The accident giving rise to the action occurred in Geneva, in Kane County; the decedent was a resident of West Chicago, in Du Page County, and so is the plaintiff; defendant is a Wisconsin corporation with its principal offices in Chicago. The attack upon the jurisdiction of the court is grounded upon section 1 of article VI of the constitution: “The judicial powers, except as in this article is otherwise provided, shall be vested in one supreme court, circuit courts, county courts, justices of the peace, police magistrates, and such courts as may be created by law in and for cities and incorporated towns.” It is contended that the reference to courts “in and for cities and incorporated towns” precludes the General Assembly from establishing municipal or city courts “which can be resorted to by plaintiffs who do not reside in the city which established the court for a determination of causes of action arising out of transactions occurring far outside of the city.”

In support of this position the defendant relies upon certain language in Turnbaugh v. Dunlop, 406 Ill. 573, as establishing a criterion of “benefit to the inhabitants of the city” as a limitation upon the jurisdiction which the legislature may confer on a municipal or city court. The question in the Turnbaugh case was the jurisdiction of the city court of Moline over an action between two residents of that city which arose out of an occurrence which took place outside of the city. The language upon which the defendant relies was used in pointing out the incongruity, as applied to the facts of that case, of the argument that maintenance of the action would not benefit the city or its inhabitants. The decision of the court was, not, however, rested upon the narrow ground that both parties resided within the city. Rather the court there held that in the case of a transitory action, if there is jurisdiction over the defendant, “jurisdictional requirements have been satisfied regardless of where the acts were performed giving rise to liability. Whatever statements this court has heretofore made to the contrary effect are not the law of this State and are hereby expressly overruled.” 406 Ill. at 585.

That there is no special significance in the constitutional reference to courts “in and for” cities was carefully pointed out in United, Biscuit Co. v. Voss Truck Lines, Inc., 407 Ill. 488, which involved the jurisdiction of the municipal court of Chicago over a transitory cause of action. We there also said: “The former holdings implying that the words 'arising in said city’ were intended or implied in section 1 of article VI of the constitution, as applied to city courts, are overruled by the recent case of Turnbaugh v. Dunlop, 406 Ill. 573, and hence the cases containing this phrase have no weight in deciding this particular question.” 407 Ill. at 499.

The decisions in the Turnbaugh and United Biscuit Co. cases were intended to put at rest the notion that a constitutional limitation upon the jurisdiction of municipal and city courts over transitory causes of action could be distilled from section 1 of article VI of the constitution. There is no language in that section which expressly prohibits the General Assembly from establishing municipal and city courts with jurisdiction over transitory actions, regardless of the residence of the parties, and we again hold that no such prohibition is to be implied or inferred from the language which was used.

Defendant next attacks the validity of section 42 of the act in relation to municipal courts in cities and villages, (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1953, chap. 37, par. 495,) under which the jury in this case was impanelled. The sentence which is attacked was added to section 42 in 1935. It provides: “Whenever it may be found convenient, jurors summoned for service in any other court of record in the county may, with the consent of the judges presiding in said other court, or of the Judge acting as chief justice thereof, be impanelled for service in the trials of cases in the municipal court.” It appears that the jurors in this case had been selected and summoned under the Jury Commissioners Act for service in the circuit court of Cook County; that the chief justice of the municipal court of Evanston had issued an order calling for the service of twenty-four jurors; that the bailiff had accordingly gone to the jury room of the circuit court of Cook County, where the names of jurors were drawn by lot out of the same hopper that was used for assignments in the circuit court, and that the jurors whose names were so drawn were then ordered to serve in the municipal court of Evanston.

By its challenge to the array defendant asserted that there had been a total failure to comply with the Jury Commissioners Act, and that section 42 violates section 13 of article IV of the constitution because it attempts to amend section 9 of the Jury Commissioners Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1953, chap. 78, par. 32,) without setting forth that section. This contention was overruled in the trial court and is renewed here.

Section 9 of the Jury Commissioners Act sets forth the procedure by which jurors are to be selected for service in courts of record in counties with a.population of more than 140,000. It provides that one or more of the judges of each court of record of the county, or of municipalies within the' county, shall certify the number of petit jurors required each month and that the clerk shall go to the office of the jury commissioners where the necessary number of names shall be drawn by lot from the list already prepared by the commissioners. The clerk then certifies to the sheriff the names selected so that the jurors may be summoned.

Section 42 of the Municipal Court Act deals with the selection of petit jurors for service in municipal courts in cities and villages. The sentence already set forth, which was added in 1935, is preceded by the requirement that jurors for municipal courts shall be provided by the same agency and from the same lists as are jurors selected for service in the circuit court, and by a provision for payment of the expense of summoning jurors, and their fees, both of which were included in the statute when originally enacted in 1929.

Defendant’s position is that section 13 of article IV requires that “Any statute that modifies the method of impanelling jurors must be incorporated into the Jury Commissioners Act.” There is, of course, no such constitutional requirement. The principle that where a law is complete in itself it is valid although its effect may be to repeal existing laws, or modify or amend them by implication, is firmly established. (People v. Deatherage, 401 Ill. 25, 42; Aaron & Bros. v. McKibbin, 392 Ill. 558; People ex rel. Curren v. Wood, 391 Ill. 237, 256; St. Louis Bridge Co. v. Becker, 372 Ill. 102; Malloy v. City of Chicago, 369 Ill. 97; Steinhagen v. Trull, 320 Ill. 382; People ex rel. Egan v.

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Bluebook (online)
123 N.E.2d 826, 4 Ill. 2d 611, 1954 Ill. LEXIS 301, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/starck-v-chicago-north-western-railway-co-ill-1954.