Amos v. Moseley

• Citation: 77 So. 619,74 Fla. 555
• Parties: AMOS, State Comptroller, et al. v. MOSELEY.
• Decision Date: 20 December 1917
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Florida

77 So. 619

74 Fla. 555

AMOS, State Comptroller, et al. v. MOSELEY.

Florida Supreme Court

December 20, 1917

Appeal from Circuit Court, Leon County; E. C. Love, Judge.

Suit in equity for an injunction by W. H. Moseley against Ernest Amos, as Comptroller of the State of Florida, and R. J Petterson and others, as members of and constituting the State Tax Commission of the State of Florida. From a temporary restraining order, defendants appeal. Reversed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

Where the Constitution provides that each house of the Legislature shall 'keep a journal of its own proceedings which shall be published,' and expressly requires that 'the vote on the final passage of every bill or joint resolution shall be taken by yeas and nays, to be entered on the journal of each house,' the journals are conclusive on the point whether the yea and nay vote was so taken and entered.

In testing the question whether an act of the Legislature was passed in conformity with the requirements of the Constitution, the journals of the houses of the Legislature will be examined; and if they furnish conclusive evidence that any bill was not passed in a constitutional manner, it cannot be recognized as a law.

Under constitutional requirements that journals of the proceedings of the legislative bodies shall be kept and published, where the journal entries as to the legislative proceedings are explicit, and conflict even with legislative acts regularly authenticated, the journals are superior, and the courts will be governed by them as to matters clearly, explicitly, and affirmatively stated therein.

It is common knowledge which this court can take cognizance of that the proceedings of each house of the Legislature are printed daily in pamphlet form, and published and distributed.

The daily printed pamphlets which contain the record of the proceedings of each house of the Legislature are the 'journals' of the respective houses.

Those things of which a court may take judicial notice require no proof.

Judicial notice is superior to evidence, as it stands for proof and fulfills the object which evidence is designed to fulfill and makes evidence on the point established by judicial notice unnecessary.

Judicial notice is taken only of those matters which are commonly known.

Individual and extrajudicial knowledge on the part of a judge will not dispense with proof of facts not judicially cognizable, and cannot be resorted to for the purpose of supplementing the record.

It is not essential that matters of judicial cognizance be actually known to the judge; if they are proper subjects of judicial knowledge, the judge may inform himself in any way which may seem best in his discretion, and act accordingly.

Journals of a branch of the Legislature are 'public records.' 'They prove their own authenticity.' Being kept in virtue of a provision of law, judicially known to the judge their existence and function in legislation are also judicially known.

In determining the validity of a law found upon the statute books, where it is attacked upon the ground that the constitutional requirements were not observed in its passage through the Legislature, the courts should not exclude from their knowledge matters of general and common knowledge which they are presumed to share with the public generally.

A specific provision for the payment of salaries and expenses necessary, proper, incidental, or growing out of a law itself, or which may be deemed needful in carrying it or its subject into execution, being matter properly connected with the subject of the law as expressed in the title, is not prohibited by the Constitution.

An act, the general purpose of which is not to make appropriations for salaries of public officers and for other current expenses of the state, may make provision for the payment of expenses necessary, proper, incidental, or growing out of the law itself, including the salaries of persons whose services and duties are provided for in the act.

The purpose of the constitutional provision that 'laws making appropriations for the salaries of public officers and other current expenses of the state shall contain provisions upon no other subject' is to prevent including in bills appropriating money to carry on the government of the state measures foreign to that purpose, and, by taking advantage of the necessities of the state, force the Legislature to adopt them, or stop the entire machinery of the government for want of funds to carry it on.

Where a law is not primarily one to appropriate money to pay 'salaries of public officers and other current expenses of the state,' it is not obnoxious to the Constitution because as an incident to its main purpose it provides for salaries and expenses necessary to carry into effect the purpose of the law.

A practical construction of a statute by a governmental department, while not of such high authority as a judicial interpretation of the act, when not in conflict with the Constitution or the plain intent of the act, is of great persuasive force and efficacy.

The construction placed upon a provision of the Constitution by the legislative and executive branches of the government will not be permitted to overturn and render nugatory a clear provision of the Constitution, in cases where the meaning of a clause in the instrument is capable of two interpretations.

The provision of the Constitution which requires, 'The Legislature shall provide for raising revenues sufficient to defray the expenses of the state for each fiscal year,' is not an inhibition on the power of the Legislature to make continuing appropriations.

The burden of showing that an act of the Legislature which has been duly signed by the presiding officer of each house and by the secretary of the Senate and clerk of the House of Representatives and has become a law with or without the approval of the Governor, as shown by the records of official acts of the legislative department, as the same are kept by the secretary of state as required by section 21 of article 4 of the Constitution, is upon the person who asserts that the act did not pass in the manner prescribed by the Constitution.

COUNSEL Van C. Swearingen, Atty. Gen., C. O. Andrews, Asst. Atty. Gen., H. Stafford Caldwell, of Live Oak, and Glenn Terrell, of Tallahassee, for appellants.

Y. L. Watson, of Quincy, and W. J. Oven, of Tallahassee, for appellee.

OPINION

BROWNE C.J.

This is a suit in equity brought by W. H. Moseley in the circuit court for Leon county to enjoin the comptroller from issuing warrants to the members of the tax commission in payment of their salaries.

A temporary restraining order was made by the chancellor, and an appeal is taken therefrom to this court, which raises the question of the validity of chapter 6500, Laws of Florida, Acts of 1913.

This attack is predicated upon the grounds that the journals of the proceedings of the Senate for the session of 1913 do not show that on the final passage of the bill the vote was taken by yeas and nays, and entered on the journals of that body as required by section 17 of article 3 of the Constitution, and because the bill contained a section making appropriations for expenses, it was in violation of section 30, art. 3, of the Constitution of the state of Florida, which provides that:

'Laws making appropriations for salaries of public officers and other current expenses of the state, shall contain provisions on no other subject.'

At the hearing of the application for a temporary injunction the complainant offered in evidence, which was admitted without objection on the part of the respondent, a bound volume of what purported to be the Journals of the Senate of Florida for the session of 1913, to which was attached the following certificate from the secretary of state:

'I. H. Clay Crawford, secretary of state of the state of Florida, do hereby certify that the attached volume is a true and correct copy of the Journal of the Senate of the state of Florida, showing the proceedings of the Senate during the session of the Legislature held in 1913, as filed in this office.'

The defendants offered in evidence what purported to be a certified copy of page 132 of the daily printed Journal of the Senate for June 4, 1913, which was admitted over the objection of the complainant.

It is a well-settled rule in this state that, where the Constitution says that each house of the Legislature shall 'keep a journal of its proceedings which shall be published,' and expressly requires that 'the vote on the final passage of every bill or joint resolution shall be taken by yeas and nays, to be entered on the journal of each house,' the journals are conclusive on the point whether the yea and nay vote was so taken and entered. Thus in State ex rel. Attorney General v. Green, 36 Fla. 154, 18 So. 334, this court said:

'It is generally held that the plain constitutional injunctions as to the mode and manner of enacting laws are mandatory, and the equally high authority that journals of the proceedings shall be kept, strengthens the view that the evidence of a compliance with such injunctions should be found in the journals.'

See, also, Wade v. Atlantic Lumber Co., 51 Fla. 628, 41 So. 72; Mathis v. State, 31 Fla. 291, 12 So. 681; State ex rel. Markens v. Brown, 20 Fla. 407.

In the latter case this court held:

'In testing the question whether an act of the Legislature was passed in conformity to the requirements of the Constitution, the Journals of the Houses of the Legislature will be examined; and if the Journals furnish conclusive evidence that any bill was not passed in a constitutional manner, it cannot be recognized as a law.'

The rule in this state is thus stated...