Sells v. Elmergreen

The civil court acquired jurisdiction of the parties and over the separate causes of action embodied in the plaintiff’s complaint and the defendant’s counterclaims as first interposed. The amendment properly allowed to the second counterclaim, increasing the amount involved to an excess of the statutory limit of the civil court’s jurisdiction, could have no effect upon its jurisdiction to proceed with the matters still properly before it.

The defendant might have asserted the counterclaim embodied in his amended pleading by an independent action in a court having such jurisdiction. His…