Cobb v. City of Wildwood
| Decision Date | 28 February 1933 |
| Docket Number | No. 234.,234. |
| Citation | 165 A. 117 |
| Parties | COBB et al. v. CITY OF WILDWOOD. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
Certiorari proceeding by Oakford M. Cobb and others to review resolutions of the Board of Commissioners of the City of Wildwood abolishing certain offices in the police department and reducing all officers to the rank of patrolmen.
Writ dismissed.
Argued October term, 1932, before PARKER, LLOYD, and HEHER, JJ.
Edward F. Merrey, of Paterson, for prosecutors.
Carl Kisselman, of Camden, for defendant.
The writ brings up a resolution of the board of commissioners of Wildwood, abolishing certain offices of the higher grades in the local police department. This resolution was adopted May 25, 1932. The writ also brings up a resolution adopted May 24, reducing all officers to the rank of patrolmen. The five prosecutors were, respectively, chief of police, captain, lieutenant, captain of detectives, and a sergeant. The office of another sergeant was included in the resolution, but he is not a party hereto.
If the resolution of May 25 was lawful, the validity of that adopted on the 24th appears to be an academic question only. We are of opinion that the resolution of the 25th is immune to any attack here made on it. That attack is, in brief, that it was not passed in good faith, but for political reasons, and that the prosecutors are by statute protected from political interference. We have carefully examined the evidence, and conclude in this case, as in Heil v. Mayor, etc., of City of Wildwood (N. J. Sup.) 164 A. 868, of the present term, that the abolition of these offices in a city of about 5,000 inhabitants as shown by the last census, was ordered in good faith in reduction of excessive municipal expenditure. Prosecutors properly concede that such offices may be bona fide abolished in the interests of economy. This, in our judgment, was the moving reason for the action taken.
Other reasons, not argued, have not been considered.
The writ will be dismissed, with costs.
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Phillips v. City of Wildwood
...economy. We have considered a similar question in Heil v. Mayor, etc., of City of Wildwood (N. J. Sup.) 164 A. 868, and Cobb et al. v. Wildwood (N. J. Sup.) 165 A. 117, both at the present and conclude in this case, as in those, that the claim is not supported by the evidence. The second po......