Bridgenor v. Rodgers

• Decision Date: 30 September 1860
• Parties: BENJAMIN F. BRIDGENOR et al. v. JOHN H. RODGERS et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

41 Tenn. 259

BENJAMIN F. BRIDGENOR et al.

v.JOHN H. RODGERS et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

September, 1860.

FROM BLEDSOE.

This cause was heard before Chancellor T. Nixon Van Dyke, at the March term, 1860, upon the facts stated in the opinion of the court.

Frazier & Hyde, Welcker & Key, for complainants.

Trewhitt & Mitchell, for respondents.

Wright, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

We are of opinion that upon the frame of the bill and amended bills in this case, Benjamin F. Bridgenor, in his individual right as a citizen and inhabitant of Bledsoe County, as well as the said county in its corporate capacity, must be regarded as having a proper status as complainants before this court. It is true that--from anything that appears in this record--the said Bridgenor does not reside within the Tenth Civil District of Bledsoe county, nor is he a tax-payer therein, and that in the case heretofore before this court, where a private individual has intervened to stay the organization of a new county, upon the ground that it violated some provision of the Constitution, he lived within the territory of that part of the old county sought to be detached, and was subject to taxes in the same.

But we do not see why any citizen and inhabitant of the county, if he be a tax-payer, is not so aggrieved by the unconstitutional proceedings as that he may apply, if he do so at a proper time, for a remedy. The spoilation of his county must of necessity result in an increase of taxation for public buildings and public expenditures, to his injury and wrong. We therefore think that the said Bridgenor, being a citizen of the county of Bledsoe and a tax-payer therein,--upon the reasoning in some of the former decisions of this court,-- had such an interest in the question, if he had come in time, as that he might maintain a suit. 2 Humph. 433;9 Humph. 159. The original bill was in his name alone, but the amended bills are filed in his name for himself, as well as on behalf of the justices of the county of Bledsoe. This makes the county a complainant in its corporate character, the justices being its proper representatives. Maury County v. Lewis County, 1 Swan, 236. The objection that the names of the justices are used without their assent or authority, situated as this case appears to us, has nothing in it, because, though the authority is called in question in the answer, the want of it is not shown anywhere in the proof; and if it were, the question could not be raised in an answer, but was matter in abatement, or a thing to be taken advantage of by a rule upon the complainant Bridgenor, or his attorney, to show by what authority the suit was being prosecuted in the names of the justices. 1 Swan, 239. It would not do to allow such a defence after the case had been proceeded in to a trial upon its merits.

But the question still remains whether the county of Sequatchie, before the complainant Bridgenor filed his bill (which was on the 18th of February, 1858), had been so organized under the statute creating it as to become a political corporation of the State. If so, according to the case of Ford v. Farmer et al., 9 Humph. 152, he, as an individual citizen, had no right to ask a court of equity to inquire into the validity of the act or to abolish the county; and such, we think, was the case here. On the 25th of February, 1856, the legislature of Tennessee passed an act detaching from the county of Bledsoe the Tenth Civil District, and from the county of Marion the First and Second Civil Districts, and attaching the same to the county of Hamilton; the act to take effect on the 21st of September, 1857. On the 9th of December, 1857, the legislature passed another act creating the county of Sequatchie, constituted of the three civil districts aforesaid, by detaching the same from the county of Hamilton; and which act took effect immediately at its passage. This act created the county of Sequatchie, in praesenti, by metes and bounds, with all the powers and privileges, and subject to all the restrictions of other counties in the State; gave it Circuit and County Courts, and fixed the time and place of holding them, provided that all officers, civil and military, within the fractions of which said county was composed, should continue to hold their office, and exercise all the powers thereof, and have the same jurisdiction as other officers in the State,...