This is an action on an account for wages earned by one Henry Sieger, who assigned his claim to the plaintiff prior to the bringing of this suit. The amount in controversy is $9.65, with interest. The defense which was set up on the trial in the circuit court was that, in a prior proceeding before a justice of the peace, instituted by Mrs. Carrie L. Hall to enforce the statutory lien of a boarding-house keeper, the defendant Haydock was summoned as garnishee, and appeared in answer to the summons, confessed his indebtedness to Sieger in the sum of $9.65, and paid the money into court; whereupon the court rendered judgment in favor of Mrs. Hall and against Sieger, and adjudged that the money, so paid into court by the garnishee, be applied in satisfaction of the same. To sustain this defense, the defendant put in evidence the proceedings had before the justice to enforce the boarding-house keeper’s lien. To obviate this defense, the plaintiff contends that those proceedings were void for want of jurisdiction ; and this is the only question in the case, and it is to be judged exclusively by an inspection of the record of those proceedings, which is embodied in the bill of exceptions.
No instructions were asked or given on the trial of this cause; but, as the circuit court rendered a finding and judgment in favor of the plaintiff, the court must have been of opinion that those proceedings before the justice to enforce the boarding-house keeper’s lien of Mrs. Hall were void. We find ourselves unable to come to that conclusion.
For the purpose of remedying this defect, the legislature by an act approved March 31, 1885 (Laws of 1885, pp. 196, 197), amended section 3197 of the Revised
“Provided that, when such lien is claimed upon the wages of any such guest or boarder, the justice shall notify the party designated by the plaintiff as owing such guest or boarder, that suit has been instituted to enforce such lien, and such notice shall be served in the same manner and have the same force and effect as garnishments in attachments, and the parties so served shall be required to answer, and shall receive the same fees as provided in section 2538, Revised Statutes, of garnishments.’ ”
The legislature, at its next session, again amended the statutes relating to the lien of boarding-house keepers by repealing section 3199, and enacting in its place the following section: “ Hotel, inn and boarding-house keepers may sell for cash the baggage and other valuables of their guests or boarders upon which they may have a lien for charges, as provided in section 3198, or which may be left with them unclaimed, after having retained possession of them for a period of not less than six months, first giving five days’ notice of such sale, stating the time, place and terms of sale, by advertisement in a newspaper published in the city or county where said sale is to take place, and, if no daily paper is published therein, then by one week’s notice in a weekly paper published therein, or by printed or written handbills put up at five places in such city or county aforesaid ; and any sums of money received from the proceeds of such sale, after paying all charges, and the expenses of sale and of storing the articles ( which said expenses of storage shall be fifty cents on each parcel), shall be paid into the county treasury, and, in
This section, indeed, repealed said section 3199, as is argued on behalf of the plaintiff, but it did not repeal, nor profess to repeal, section 3197, as amended by the act of 1885. And we have seen that that section, as amended by the act of 1885, contained an independent provision for the enforcement of the lieu of boardinghouse keepers by the use of the process of garnishment. That provision, as quoted above, is complete in itself, and did not depend for its vitality upon the fact of reference being made in section 3199 to the provisions of section 3197. It was an independent and presumably a salutary statutory provision, and the legislature cannot, in amending section 3199, be presumed to have intended to repeal it, or in any way affect it. On the contrary, it is quite obvious that the purpose of the legislature, in amending section 3199 merely, was to afford to the boarding-house keeper an additional remedy for the enforcement of the lien given by the preceding section of the statute. There was, no doubt, something incongruous in attaching this independent proviso to a statute which, as it originally stood, professed to relate only to the enforcement of the lien given to the keepers of horses and other animals ; but the amendatory act of 1885 clearly expresses in its caption the purpose of the legislature to provide for the enforcement of liens when claimed by hotel, inn and boarding-house keepers upon the wages of their guests or boarders. The revisers of the revision of 1889 transferred this proviso to the article relating to the liens of hotel, inn and boarding-house keepers, so as to annex it to what was originally section 3199, Revised Statutes, 1879, as amended by the statute of 1887; and in this manner it stands in'the present revision. 2 R. S. 1889,
The further point is made that the record of the proceedings before the justice of the peace, in the action to enforce the boarding-house keeper’s lien of Mrs. Hall, shows that the judgment of the justice was-void, because the proceedings were not taken in compliance with the statute. An inspection of the record satisfies us that the statute was sufficiently complied with to show jurisdiction for the purpose of a collateral attack of the justice’s judgment.
The judgment of the circuit court, will accordingly be reversed, and, as the defendant has exhibited a complete defense both in law and fact, the cause will not be remanded. It is so ordered.