Opinion
June Term, 1897.
E.D. Benedict, for the appellant.
John Hunter, Jr., for the respondent.
This action is triable, under section 984 of the Code of Civil Procedure, in the county in which one of the parties resided at the commencement thereof. The plaintiff and the defendant, when the suit was begun, both lived in the territory formerly constituting the village of Westchester, but which had been annexed to the city and county of New York for certain purposes by chapter 934 of the Laws of 1895. The defendant contends that the effect of the Annexation Act was to make both parties thereafter residents of the county of New York, and that the county of Westchester is, therefore, not the proper place of trial.
It is settled, however, that the annexed district in question has not become a part of the county of New York in the full and complete sense and for all purposes. It remains included within the second judicial district and department and within the twenty-second Senate district and under the jurisdiction of the board of supervisors of Westchester county for the purpose of forming Assembly districts. ( People ex rel. Henderson v. Supervisors, 147 N.Y. 1.) In affirming the validity of the act of 1895 the Court of Appeals thus limited its operation. The revised Constitution, in directing the Legislature to divide the State into four judicial departments, declared that the first department should consist of the county of New York, while "the others shall be bounded by county lines, and be compact and equal in population as nearly as may be." (Const. art. 6, § 2.) As the second judicial department must be bounded by county lines, under this constitutional provision, and as the Court of Appeals has already held that the annexed district is still a portion of that department, it follows that for some purposes, and those more particularly connected with the administration of justice, the annexed district continues to be a part of the county of Westchester. We think it yet remains so much a portion thereof that persons who live there are to be deemed residents of Westchester county for the purpose of determining the venue of an action in the Supreme Court under section 984 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
The order appealed from should be affirmed.
All concurred.
Order affirmed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements.