Crenshaw v. State

• Decision Date: 22 April 1912
• Citation: 58 So. 219,101 Miss. 457
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: H. W. CRENSHAW ET AL. v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI EX REL

58 So. 219

101 Miss. 457

H. W. CRENSHAW ET AL. v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI EX REL

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 22, 1912

October 1911

APPEAL from the circuit court of Tunica county, HON. SAM C. COOK Judge.

This was a quo warranto proceeding by the state of Mississippi on the relation of W. A. Alcorn, Jr., district attorney, against H. C. Crenshaw and others. From a judgment granting the writ defendants appeal.

The facts are sufficiently stated in the opinion of the court.

Affirmed.

Dinkins & Caldwell and J. W. Cutrer, for appellants.

Julian C. Wilson and Oscar G. Johnson, for appellee.

No brief of counsel on either side found in the record.

Argued orally by J. W. Cutrer, for appellant.

Argued orally by O. G. Johnson and Julian C. Wilson, for appellees.

OPINION

MCLEAN, J.

This is a writ of quo warranto, brought by the district attorney against the officers of what is known as the "Tallahatchie Drainage District." It is necessary to consider only one of the very many interesting questions which this record presents, as this one question is decisive of the case.

In 1908 the legislature of this state passed what is known as the act creating the Tallahatchie drainage district in this state. Ch. 147, p. 147, Acts 1908. The object and purpose of this suit is to test the constitutionality of that act. The act by its express provisions applies to the county of Quitman, and certain parts of the counties of De Soto, Tate, Tallahatchie, Tunica, and Coahoma, and by no sort or kind of reasoning can this act be rescued from being a local act. Sec. 90 of the Constitution of 1890 provides that: "The legislature shall not pass local, private or special laws, in any of the following enumerated cases, but such matters shall be provided for only by general laws, viz.: . . . (q) Relating to stock laws, watercourses and fences." Section 2 of the act provides that: "Be it further enacted that the object and purpose of creating said drainage district is to provide adequate and effectual drainage for the lands thereof, by artificial drains, canals, ditches, or other drainage facilities." Section 6 provides that said commission shall cause its chief engineer to inaugurate and complete a system of surveys to cover the entire territory of said drainage district. Said surveys shall be made so as to develop the topography of the land "and its facilities and possibilities for drainage, and the best method to effect the drainage of said entire drainage district and all of its parts, by artificial canals and by ditches, and by shortening and improving the natural channels and waterways in said district." Section 7 provides that said chief engineer "shall also develop by said surveys the natural drainage units in said drainage district, . . . and shall make a map of each of said drainage units, showing thereon the system of lateral drains, ditches, or improved natural water channels," etc.

It is therefore perfectly manifest from this act that "improved natural water channels" and "the natural channels and waterways" and "other drainage facilities"--that is, "other than artificial drains, channels, ditches"--are to be dealt with by this commission. After a very careful examination of this...