Downham v. Alexandria

ON motion to dismiss. The case was this:

The city of Alexandria, in Virginia, on a suit brought by it, in one of the county courts of the State, against a certain Downham, a dealer in liquors, had obtained a judgment for two hundred dollars; the amount of a tax imposed by the city on dealers of his class. Downham took the case by appeal to the Fourth Judicial District Court of the State, in which the judgment of the county court was 'wholly affirmed.' He then brought the case from that court directly here, conceiving that he had a right so to bring it here, under the 25th section of the Judiciary Act, which gives a writ of error from this court (in a certain class of cases within which the present suit was assumed to come), when a judgment has been given in the highest court of law or equity of the State 'in which a decision in the suit can be had.'

There was confessedly a higher court of law and equity in the State than the court last-named, to wit, the Supreme Court of Appeals; but Downham did not take the case to it; assuming that by the constitution and laws of Virginia he could not properly do so; and that being thus unable to take it there, he had a right to come directly from the inferior court.

The questions, therefore, were:

1. The chief one-whether under the constitution and laws of Virginia he was correct in assuming that he had no right to go to a higher court than that of the Fourth Judicial District? And if he was correct in this,

2. The question-one not much disputed-whether he could bring the case here from it, there being a higher court of law and equity in the State?

At the time when the writ of error was allowed and issued, and service of citation acknowledged, the constitution in force in Virginia was that of 1864. That constitution excluded from the appellate jurisdiction, in civil cases, of the Supreme Court of Appeals, all suits where the matter in controversy, exclusive of costs, was less than five hundred dollars, except certain specified controversies, among which were distinctly mentioned controversies concerning the right of a corporation to levy tolls or taxes. The case before the court being a controversy concerning the right of the corporation of Alexandria to impose and collect a tax upon plaintiffs in error, and, therefore, a controversy within the very terms of the exception, might have been taken to the Supreme Court of Appeals if nothing else had interposed. An act of the legislature of Virginia, however, passed February 27th, 1867, provided that no appeal to the Supreme Court should be allowed in any case from a judgment of the District Court wholly affirming the judgment of the Circuit Court, and where the matter in controversy did not exceed one thousand dollars.

Mr. D. L. Smoot, in support of the motion to dismiss, contended that the act in question was unconstitutional. Messrs. G. W. Brent and C. W. Wattles, contra.

The CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the court.