SOLOMON WILLIAMS, Petitioner, v. D. R. HORTON and His Honor, J. EVERETT BULL,

Stipendiary Magistrate, Monrovia, Respondents. APPLICATION FOR CERTIORARI TO THE STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATE’S COURT, MONROVIA. Argued October 22, 1959. Decided January 14, 1960. 1. Certiorari will lie where the rights of a party are manifestly prejudiced by a ruling of an inferior court during the pendency of a case. 2. It is mandatory that a defendant be given notice of the nature of the action. 3. Since an appeal in a summary ejectment action does not serve as a supersedeas to the enforcement of the judgment, it is essential that the defendant in such an action be duly notified prior to the hearing thereupon. Petitioner, a tenant at will of premises owned by one of the respondents, applied to this Court for a writ of certiorari, alleging that the respondent Magistrate had improperly and prejudicially ruled that no notice was required in a summary ejectment brought by the respondent landlord against the petitioner as tenant and defendant. Certiorari was granted. 0. Natty B. Davis for petitioner. E. N. Wollo for respondents. MR. JUSTICE PIERRE delivered the opinion of the Court. These proceedings in certiorari have grown out of a summary ejectment case filed in the Magistrate’s court by respondent Horton against the petitioner, who is alleged to be a tenant at will living on premises owned by the aforesaid respondent. The petitioner, as such tenant at will, is alleged to have paid annual rents over a period of time, until recently when he was asked to surrender the premises to his landlord. There is no showing here that prior to the institution of the suit in summary ejectment any request for the tenant to quit the premises had been LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 445 made by the landlord and refused. The significance of this important requirement might never have been raised if the Magistrate’s ruling on a motion to dismiss the complaint for want of notice had not raised the point. It would appear that the petitioner, in obedience to a writ of summons, found himself facing a complaint in summary ejectment before the respondent Magistrate. Feeling that he had not been brought into court in keeping with law or the rules governing our procedure and practice, he filed a motion to dismiss the complaint; and although the motion contains four counts, we deem only two of them legally sufficient and necessary to the determination of this case. These two counts read as follows : I. Because defendant says that the plaintiff has breached one of the fundamental principles of law, that of giving notice. Defendant contends that under the new 1956 Code, it is imperative that the plaintiff must serve on the defendant a copy of the writ of summons or a copy of the complaint if any there be. The object of this law, defendant contends, is to give him notice of what the plaintiff seeks to prove against him. This not having been done renders the entire action of the said plaintiff dismissible. II 2. And also because defendant says that plaintiff in his writ of summons refers to several notices served on him, without attaching one of the copies so as to enable the court to pass upon its merit, in order to ascertain whether the time given by the said plaintiff has expired, which would enable the plaintiff to receive judgment for the ousting of the defendant. This not having been done renders the said action a fit subject for dismissal, and this the defendant prays.” The above-quoted counts, although separately stating different grounds for dismissal, are both anchored in the legal requirement of giving notice as a condition prece- 446 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS dent to a defendant’s answering a complaint in any court. After hearing arguments for and against the motion, the respondent Magistrate prepared and read a ruling passing upon the issues of law raised therein. In this ruling he denied the motion ; and it was at this stage of the matter that the defendant, now petitioner, took flight to the Chambers of the Supreme Court, praying for the issuance of a writ of certiorari, so that the Justice presiding in Chambers might review and correct allegedly prejudicial errors committed in the court below. Before we look into the petition and examine the grounds thereof, it might be of importance to our conclusions to quote pertinent portion of the Magistrate’s ruling denying the motion, and especially that portion of it which relates to the question of notice, and which reads as follows : “It is not a legal obligation for plaintiff to be compelled to serve notice on the defendant in this case. Instead, our statute says that ejectment may be had, with or without notice, when the jurisdiction of such Magistrate shall be limited to the adjudication of right of possession, never of title.” The Magistrate grounded this portion of his ruling on 1956 Code, tit. 6, � 1121 and 1123. We will discuss these statutory provisions in this opinion. The petition for certiorari has reiterated the grounds laid in the motion to dismiss in the Magistrate’s Court, and has contended that the Magistrate’s denial of the said motion was a prejudicial error which this Court should correct. Certiorari will lie in every instance where the rights of a party seem to be manifestly prejudiced by the rulings of an inferior court during the pendency of a case. We have examined the petition and the returns ; we have reviewed the motion to dismiss and the Magistrate’s ruling thereon; we have studied the briefs of both parties, and we have listened to arguments from both sides before this bar. We have not been able to bring ourselves to agree with the grounds for denying the motion, as laid in the ruling LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 447 of the Magistrate. We are of the considered opinion that, in all cases brought before our courts, notice of some kind is legally necessary to the fair and impartial hearing of the defendant’s plea. We think it was materially prejudicial to the defendant’s interest in the instant action of summary ejectment to have brought him into court upon a writ which did not notify him of what was intended to be proved against him, to have denied him the opportunity of enjoying his right of notice, as the Magistrate’s ruling did, and then to have attempted to hear him on a complaint which completely took him by surprise, insofar as his having had any knowledge of its contents, previous to his appearance in court. Our statute provides : “Service of a summons issued by a justice or magistrate shall be made by reading a copy thereof to the appropriate person as determined from the provisions of this section and by delivering to him a copy of such summons containing the substance of the complaint.” 1956 Code, tit. 6, � 221 (e). It is our opinion that notifying the defendant is mandatory in all cases; but more so do we feel that this mandatory requirement should be observed in cases of summary ejectment, since appeal in such cases does not serve as a supersedeas to the enforcement of the judgment. A defendant in summary ejectment should be properly notified before he is made to appear at the hearing, since his failure to effectively defend against the complaint, could result in a judgment against him, and an announcement of appeal therefrom would not maintain the status quo. But, ordinarily, notice to parties of what is intended to be proved against them is the elementary duty of every complaining party; and we say and emphasize that this requirement should be most certainly complied with in suits of summary ejectment. Any ruling which would deny a defendant in such cases the right to be notified previous to his appearance in court is, in our opinion, an infringement of the most sacred rights of a party litigant. 448 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS According to the summary ejectment statute, a defendant may have redress by an action against the plaintiff after having been illegally evicted upon a judgment from which appeal was taken. It seems strange, indeed, that a plaintiff in such a circumstance, would be asked to satisfy any damages the defendant might have suffered as a result of the erroneous ruling of a magistrate when, indeed and in truth, his only act to warrant such treatment was an exercise of his legal right to bring an action for recovery or repossession of his own property. There is another peculiarity about this summary ejectment statute. Appeal in normal cases acts as a stay of execution of judgment until the appellate court reviews. In summary ejectment, however, the defendant’s right to enjoy the benefit of appeal is subordinated to the whims and notions–no matter how illegal–of the Magistrate from whose judgment appeal is taken. The peculiarities of this statute would therefore seem to pose a few legal complications. However, since these peculiarities have not been raised in such a manner to give us the right to effectively pass upon them, we will. refrain from any further comment upon them in this opinion. Because of what we have said about the peculiarities of the summary ejectment statute, we feel that Magistrates and Justices of the Peace, in their handling of such cases, should strictly observe and enforce the laws and procedures governing such hearings before them, so as to leave the parties, and especially the defendants, no ground to question the fairness and legality of the courts’ acts. For, no matter how well intentioned the Magistrate’s rulings in such cases might be, if they are contrary to law, or if they violate trial procedure, appeal could not effect the same cure in summary ejectment as it would in cases where it serves as a mandatory stay of execution of judgment. These peculiarities would therefore require that Justices of the Peace and Magistrates lend themselves more studiously to applying the provisions of this statute with a view to the protection of the parties which is so necessary to LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 449 secure for all concerned the full extent of their legal rights. We have reviewed the two citations concerning ejectment referred to earlier in this opinion, and upon which the Magistrate based his ruling denying the defendant the right to be notified before the hearing; and we have not been able to agree with his conclusions that these statutory provisions apply to the circumstances in this case. The relevant portion of title 6, � 1121 of the 1956 Code, which is mentioned in the said ruling, is as follows : “A person rightfully entitled to the possession of real property may bring an action of ejectment with or without notice when : . . . (c) A tenant at will remains in possession after notice to vacate.” Title 6, � 1123 of the 1956 Code, upon which the ruling was also based, reads as follows : “When a person who is entitled to the possession of real property is unable to obtain same by peaceful means, he may obtain possession thereof by a summary proceeding before a justice of the peace or magistrate. The jurisdiction of such justice or magistrate shall be limited to the adjudication of the right of possession, never of title, and to the award of damages not exceeding three hundred dollars for the wrongful withholding of possession by the defendant. The justice or magistrate may also award costs in the proceeding and make the necessary order to put the rightful party in possession of the real property.” Nowhere in any one of the above-quoted statutory passages is there anything which could have lead the Magistrate to infer that the Legislature intended to say that suits in summary ejectment could be brought without giving the tenant notice to vacate the premises before the institution of the action, or without giving him notice in the complaint of what he would be called upon to answer at the hearing. On the contrary, it is very clearly stated there that tenants at will who remain in possession of the landlord’s property after notice to vacate might be sued in 450 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS ejectment, with or without notice. This should seem reasonable to any logical mind, and there should be no difficulty in understanding this to mean that a tenant who had refused to remove upon a previous notice to vacate should need no further notice before the landlord institutes summary ejectment against him. But the notice to vacate must, of necessity, have been given before the action is brought. Therefore we think it was error on part of the respondent Magistrate, to have ruled that previous notice to a tenant sued in summary ejectment is not a legal obligation on part of the plaintiff. In concluding this opinion, we do not feel that we should review any of the issues pending before the Magistrate in so far as the merits of the summary ejectment suit is concerned. We do not feel that the question of title, as raised by petitioner, both in his petition and in his brief, is either relevant to the proceedings, or cognizable before us at this time. Our only concern now is the question of whether or not the act of the Magistrate in denying the defendant’s motion prejudiced his rights in the court below. It is therefore our opinion that, in view of the foregoing, the Magistrate should be, and he is hereby ordered to resume jurisdiction over the summary ejectment proceedings with a view to hearing and determining the same ; and since the respondent’s counsel contended in his brief and argued before this bar that, nothwithstanding the ruling of the Magistrate, previous notice had indeed been given the tenant to vacate the premises, the plaintiff in summary ejectment should be called upon to prove, by witnesses or otherwise, his having given such legal notice, and the defendant’s failure to have removed from the premises. The Magistrate will then proceed to determine the case in keeping with the evidence and the law controlling in such cases. And it is so ordered. Certiorari granted.