Bush v. Hanson

Citations

• 70 Ill. 480

Syllabus

<p>1. Jurisdiction. The power to hear and determine a case, is jurisdiction ; it is coram judice whenever a case is presented which brings this power into action.</p> <p>3. Same—judgment by confession. Where a declaration, the warrant of attorney, and affidavit of its execution, the note and cognovit by the attorney authorized, are filed, the defendant is before the court, and there is enough to set the court in motion to hear and determine. • 1</p> <p>3. If, in such case, the court proceeds, and, in rendering judgment, acts without sufficient evidence, without the oral testimony required by the 3d section of the act of 34th of February, 1859, concerning confessions of judgment, having been produced, a case will be presented, not of want of jurisdiction, but one only of error in the exercise of jurisdiction.</p> <p>4. The production of the evidence required by that act to authorize the judgment is not a jurisdictional fact, where the court has before acquired the right to proceed to hear testimony and determine the case.</p> <p>5. Cognovit—warrant of attorney to confess judgment. A warrant of attorney to confess judgment, is a familiar common law security, and the entry of judgment by cognovit thereunder is a proceeding according to the course of the common law, which courts have ever entertained, in the ordinary exercise of their authority as courts of general jurisdiction.</p> <p>6. And the fact that the statute has regulated the mode of procedure, does not convert the proceeding into one of such a special statutory character, that the same presumptions do not obtain as in the case of ordinary judgments of superior courts of general jurisdiction.</p> <p>7. Although, by the declaration, the action may appear to be prematurely brought, a confession of judgment will cure the defect.</p>