Cassard v. Tracy

Citations

• 52 La. Ann. 835

Syllabus

<p>Syllabus.</p> <p>3. Laws, whether constitutional or statutory, should be construed to operate prospectively only, unless the words employed show a clear intention that they should have a retrospective effect.</p> <p>2. Legal enactments regulating procedure are generally applicable to pending cases, and may, not unfrequently, operate retrospectively; but, the line must be drawn in any case in which, under the form of modifying the remedy, or 5 regulating the procedure, substantial rights, legally acquired, are impaired, or divested.</p> <p>3. Judgments of trial courts, by the law oC this State, when once rendered, and made final, as far as they can be so made by the action of such courts, become the property of those in whose favor they are given.</p> <p>4. The provisions of the Constitution of 1808 establishing, and conferring jurisdiction upon the courts of appeal, upon questions of fact as well as upon questions of law, in certain cases, were not intended to operate retrospectively so as to set aside, or require said courts to set aside judgments previously rendered, and which become the property of those in whose favor they were given.</p> <p>Ok Rehearing.</p> <p>1. The moment the Constitution of 1898 went into effect appeals then pending in the Court of Appeals became entitled to consideration, not from the point of view of the jurisdiction conferred upon the court by the Constitution of 1S79, but from the point of view of the jurisdiction conferred upon the court .by the Constitution of 1898.</p> <p>2. Under the Constitution of 1879 appeals to the Court of Appeals for the Parish of Orleans in cases involving less than five hundred dollars were upon questions of law alone; under the Constitution of 1898 the court has jurisdiction in all cases both of the law and the facts.</p> <p>3. Where an appeal in a case for less than $500 was pending in the Court of Appeals for the Parish of Orleans when the Constitution of 1898 went into effect, but the evidence upon wh