Opinion
A re-enactment of certain portions only of an existing statute, in an amending Act which purports to be a substitute for the former, effectually repeals the provisions of the original Act which are omitted from the substitute. The right of appeal from the City Court of Bridgeport to the Court of Common Pleas, given by § 119 of the city charter (15 Special Laws, p. 493), was repealed by the omission of that provision from the Act of 1917 (17 Special Laws, p. 1005) amending that section of the charter.
Argued April 10th, 1918
Decided May 8th, 1918.
APPEAL by the defendant from a judgment of the Court of Common Pleas in Fairfield County, Booth, J., erasing from the docket for want of jurisdiction an appeal to that court by the defendant from an adverse judgment of the City Court of Bridgeport. No error.
Section 119 of the charter of the City of Bridgeport, as revised in 1907 (15 Special Laws, p. 493), provided for the existence of a City Court, fixed its jurisdiction, prescribed its procedure, and defined the rights of the parties litigant therein. Among other things it provided that an appeal might be taken to the Court of Common Pleas for Fairfield County, at its next return day, from any judgment or decree of the court except one following a jury trial. In this particular the charter remained unchanged until the 1917 session of the General Assembly. At that session § 119 was amended to read as recited in the amending Act. In its amended form that portion of the original section above referred to, which gave the right of appeal from a judgment or decree rendered, was entirely eliminated and no provision authorizing such appeal appears in it. This amendment took effect before the present attempt to take an appeal was made.
John A. Cornell, Jr., for the appellant (defendant).
John Smith, for the appellee (plaintiff).
The amendment of 1917 substituted § 119, as therein recited, for the section as it had previously existed. Those portions of the original section which were omitted from the section in its new form, ceased to be the law and were as effectually repealed as it was possible to accomplish a repeal. The defendant's attempted appeal was, therefore, without authority, and conferred upon the Court of Common Pleas no jurisdiction over the case.