Opinion
July 18, 1950.
Appeal from the Florida Railroad Public Utilities Commission.
Russell L. Frink, Jacksonville, Charles Cook Howell, Wilmington, N.C., Harold B. Wahl, Jacksonville, and Frank G. Kurka, for appellants.
Lewis W. Petteway, D. Fred McMullen and Guyte P. McCord, Jr., all of Tallahassee, and C.F. Hillyer, Jacksonville, for appellees.
This cause is before the court on a motion to dismiss an appeal from an order of the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission. The order was entered in a proceeding before the Commission wherein the United States Sugar Corporation complained against the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company and the Florida East Coast Railway Company, alleging that the railroads had failed and refused to republish in their tariffs for the 1948-1949 shipping season certain seasonal carload minimum weights in regard to the shipment of sugar cane transported over the lines of the railroads, averring that the railroads were demanding charges based upon increased carload minimum weights, and praying that the seasonal carload minimum weights which the railroads failed to republish be established and applied to such seasonal transportation in the future. After answers had been filed by the railroads and evidence had been offered on the issues presented by the pleadings the Commission entered an order granting the relief sought in the complaint. Within 60 days from the entry of this order the railroads filed a notice of appeal to this court, designating as appellees in the appeal the complainant, United States Sugar Corporation, and the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission, the state agency that entered the order from which the appeal was taken.
The question on the motion to dismiss is whether a final order of the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission may be reviewed on direct appeal by the Supreme Court of Florida.
The appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Florida is defined by section 5, Article V, of the Constitution, F.S.A., which reads as follows: "The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction in all cases at law and in equity originating in Circuit Courts, and of appeals from the Circuit Courts in cases arising before Judges of the County Courts in matters pertaining to their probate jurisdiction and in the management of the estates of infants, and in cases of conviction of felony in the criminal courts, and in all criminal cases originating in the Circuit Courts. The Court shall have the power to issue writs of mandamus, certiorari, prohibition, quo warranto, habeas corpus, and also all writs necessary or proper to the complete exercise of its jurisdiction * * *."
It is plain from the record that the order entered in the proceeding instituted in the Florida Railroad and Public Utilities Commission did not originate as a case at law or in equity in the Circuit Court. The order was not one entered by the Circuit Court with respect to a case arising before a judge of the County Court in a matter pertaining to that court's probate jurisdiction or to the management of the estate of infants. It was not an order from a conviction in a criminal case originating in the Circuit Court or from a conviction of a felony in the criminal courts. It was not, therefore, an order reviewable by this court on a direct appeal.
Section 59.45, Florida Statutes 1949, F.S.A., provides that "If an appeal be improvidently taken where the remedy might have been more properly sought by certiorari, this alone shall not be a ground for dismissal; but the notice of appeal and the record thereon shall be regarded and acted on as a petition for certiorari duly presented to the supreme court."
Under this section of the statute we have the authority to consider the appeal lodged in this court as a petition for certiorari, and it is our conclusion that the appeal should be so treated, and that the cause should proceed in accordance with rules governing certiorari.
It is so ordered.
TERRELL, Acting C.J., and CHAPMAN and HOBSON, JJ., concur.