State v. Crawford

• Decision Date: 24 February 1891
• Citation: 17 R.I. 292,21 A. 546
• Parties: STATE ex rel. Cummings v. CRAWFORD.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

21 A. 546

17 R.I. 292

STATE ex rel. Cummings

v. CRAWFORD.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Feb. 24, 1891.

Application for quo warranto.

Charles E. Gorman, for relator.

Edward D. Bassett and John E. Goldsworthy, for respondent.

STINESS, J. The information sets out that at the annual meeting of the Central Falls Fire-District, January 5, 1891, the respondent was elected first member of the board of fire-wards; but was ineligible for such election, because he was not at that time a qualified elector in said fire-district. Article 9, § 1, of the constitution, provides: "No person shall be eligible to any civil office, (except the office of school committee,) unless he is a qualified elector for such office." The question then is whether a member of the board of fire-wards of said district is a civil officer. The fire district was incorporated October, 1847, for the purpose of providing apparatus for extinguishing fires. The charter gives the right to vote to the taxable inhabitants of the district, and says the "officers shall consist of a moderator, clerk, treasurer, three assessors, and a collector of taxes, whose duties and powers within said district shall be such as like officers have in their respective towns. They may also elect fire-wards and president of fire-wards." A corporation of this character was held to be a public or quasi municipal corporation. Cole v. Fire-Engine Co., 12 R. I. 202. See, also, State v. District of Narragansett, 16 R. I. 424, 16 Atl. Rep. 901. But it does not follow that all its officers and agents hold a civil office. It is a special and limited corporation, for special and limited purposes. Only the taxable inhabitants of the district are admitted as members of the corporation, for by the charter these only are eligible to vote and to act in its meetings. As originally created, it was a fire company, with power to levy taxes within the district for fire purposes, in order to divide the expense among those needing and receiving protection; and also with power to enforce obedience to fire-wards, in time of fire, in order to prevent any interference with their duties and to preserve order. These powers were evidently conferred to effectuate the purpose of the corporation, but they do not change the restricted character of the corporation itself, nor so enlarge its scope as to make its agents civil officers. Under the charter and by-laws, the fire-wards have command of the fire department. They are its chief engineers; their duties relate wholly to the extinguishment of fires, and the care of the apparatus. As was said of this class of officers in People v. Pinckney, 32 N. Y. 377: "Officers they were in respect to their relations to the subordinate members of the fire department, and in the sense in which that term is used to indicate that relation, but never in the civil and public sense in which it is used in the constitution." In Sheboygan Co. v. Parker, 3 Wall. 93, Judge Grier said: "An officer of the county is one by whom the county performs its usual political functions; its functions of government." Hence commissioners to whom a special authority had been given to issue bonds in behalf of a county were held not to be county officers. In U. S. v. Hatch, 1 Pin. 182, the term "civil officers"...