
    Thomas D. Cottle, plaintiff in error, vs. Joel Dodson, defendant in error.
    A claim of slave levied on to satisfy an execution issued from a Justices Couri^ jnust he returned to the Superior or Inferior Court whichever may ho first held.
    Claim, from Marion county. Tried before Judge Worrill. March Term, 1858.
    When said cause came to be tried, it was moved to dismiss the claim, on the ground that the same was interposed on a Justice Court fi. fa., to a levy on a negro slave made before the November Term of the Inferior Court, and should have been returned to said Court. Whereas it was returned to the March Term of the Superior Court. Whereupon the Court refused to entertain jurisdiction and dismissed the case.
    This motion was on the part of claimant, and the plaintiff in fi.fa. excepted and assigns error.
    Davis & Hudson, for plaintiff in error.
    Elam & Oliver, for defendants in error.
   By the Court.

McDonald, J.

delivering the opinion.

The statute requires that claims of slaves, levied on by virtue of a writ of ft. fa. issued from a Justices Court, shall lbe returned to the next Term of the Superior or Inferior Court, which ever may first happen, there to be tried. The Haw regulating thus, the time and place of trial, the parties are bound to take notice of it, and we must presume that the parties will respectively prepare for trial in the proper form. If the Sheriff fail to make a return as the law directs, the plaintiff in execution or claimant, may move a rule against him for the return of the claim.

The Court below ought to have stricken the case from his docket It had no more authority to dismiss the claim than to try it, and I suppose all it did was t© strike it.

Judgment affirmed  