HIGH COURT IN SUGAR CREEK.
Justice A. P. Fonda, Ousted, Refuses
to Grant an Appeal.
Jackson county justice put another bandage over her eyes yesterday and went on a rampage. While Chief Ahern's Gallagher lunacy commission was sitting without authority under the state statutes, in fact, in direct violation of them, Justice A. P. Fonda of Sugar Creek renewed the controversy of who is really the dispenser of the law in that refinery adjunct.
When the Sugar Creek Mercantile Company, which had run a garnishment on F. M. Dabney and had lost the case, wanted to appeal, Justice Fonda refused to allow the appeal. So the would-be appellant yesterday asked the circuit court for a writ of mandamus to compel Fonda to act.
It has been n early two week ago since Judge Walter A. Powell, sitting in the circuit court in Independence, decided that Fonda was not legally a justice. But Fonda keeps right on dispensing justice at the same old stand.
The whole Sugar Creek controversy originated some months ago when Albert Allen, justice of the peace, found business so dull that he wen tot California on a vacation. During his absence there was some need of a court and so the county judges appointed Fonda to the job. In three weeks Allen returned and turned again to the old trade of justicing.
Then enters the county court again. An order was made commanding Allen to surrender his records, so that they might be turned over to Fonda. Allen took the case before Judge Powell, who held that as Allen had never been disqualified, he was justice still.
So Allen has the circuit court back of him and Fonda is the protege of the county court. And justice goes merrily on in Sugar Creek, home of a court of last resort.
