Crovatt v. Mason

• Decision Date: 21 May 1897
• Citation: Crovatt v. Mason, 101 Ga. 246, 28 S.E. 891 (Ga. 1897)
• Parties: CROVATT v. MASON.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

28 S.E. 891

101 Ga. 246

CROVATT v. MASON.

Supreme Court of Georgia

May 21, 1897

Syllabus by the Court.

1. An act of the general assembly which renders councilmen and aldermen of the cities and towns of this state incompetent to hold any other municipal office during the time for which they were chosen is not unconstitutional because by its terms such act is made applicable only to cities and towns of 2,000 inhabitants or more; but the same is a general act, and as such is applicable to all towns and cities within the state falling within the designated class at the time of its passage, or which may do so thereafter.

2. The office of mayor of a city or town having more than 2,000 inhabitants is a municipal office, within the meaning of such act.

3. An act amending an existing charter of a municipal corporation which provides that "the mayor and aldermen shall hold their office for two years, or until their successors are elected and qualified," fixes the terms of such officers at two years. (a) The term of one of such officers is not reduced or changed by his resignation of the office and the election of his successor before the expiration of two years from the beginning of such term.

4. An application for leave to file an information in the nature of a writ of quo warranto, to inquire into the right of a person to hold the office of mayor of a city, the duties of which such person is in fact discharging, will be granted at the instance of any other person who either claims the office, or is interested therein. If, however, the facts upon which a claim to the office is based are set forth, and, on their face, show that the claim is not well founded, the application, so far as it rests upon this ground, is not sustainable.

5. A defeated candidate for the office, whether he does or does not claim the same, if a citizen of the city, has such an interest in the office as will entitle him to have the application granted, in a proper case made.

6. Where such an application is made by a relator who predicates his prayer on two grounds, viz. (1) that the person receiving the highest number of votes was ineligible to hold the office, and that the relator, being eligible, received the next highest number of votes, and for this reason he claims such office; and (2) that the relator is a citizen of such city, and of the state and county in which the same is situated, and as such citizen has an interest in such office,--the first of these grounds affords no cause for granting the relief sought, because the claim to the office considered in the light of the facts on which it is based, is without merit, in that it fails to show any right on the part of the applicant to have and exercise the duties and prerogatives of the office; but the second ground, based on citizenship and consequent interest in the office, taken in connection with the alleged ineligibility of the incumbent of the office, makes a case entitling the applicant, in his capacity as citizen, to an order granting leave to file the information.

Error from superior court, Glynn county; J. L. Sweat, Judge.

Application by A. J. Crovatt for leave to file an information in the nature of a quo warranto against E. H. Mason. From a judgment denying the petition, plaintiff brings error. Reversed.

Crovatt & Whitfield, Glenn & Rountree, and J. A. Noyes, for plaintiff in error.

Brantley & Bennet, for defendant in error.

LITTLE J.

The official report states the facts. The application for leave to file an information in the nature of a writ of quo warranto which was made in this case was denied generally by the judge of the Brunswick circuit. We reverse that judgment and in doing so have considered all the grounds which were urged here, both by the briefs and in the argument, in support of the judgment rendered below, as well as the objections urged thereto by the plaintiff in error, and will now give the conclusions to which such consideration has led:

It is contended by the plaintiff in error that the defendant was ineligible to hold the office of mayor of Brunswick on December 12, 1896, the date at which the regular election was held, and that such ineligibility was caused by the following facts: On the second Saturday in December, 1895, the defendant was elected an alderman of the city of Brunswick for and during a term of two years, commencing on the 1st Monday in January, 1896, and that he qualified and was filling the said term as alderman of Brunswick at the date of the regular election in 1896, and that the term for which he was elected alderman did not expire until the first Monday in January, 1898. That under the laws of Georgia he was not eligible to the office of mayor of Brunswick during the term for which he was elected alderman, and is not, therefore, entitled to hold the office of mayor, for which office he was a candidate, and received a majority of the votes, December 12, 1896. To this contention it is replied by the defendant that, by the provisions of an act to consolidate and amend the several acts incorporating the city of Brunswick (Acts 1872, p. 151), it is provided that all male persons, citizens of the United States, who have resided 6 months in the state, and 30 days immediately preceding the election in the corporate limits of Brunswick, have registered, attained the age of 21 years, and paid all taxes legally demanded, etc., shall be qualified to vote for mayor and aldermen, and that any person legally entitled to vote for those officers, and who shall have actually resided 12 months previous to the election in said city, was and is eligible to the office of mayor or alderman; that the respondent was qualified under this act to hold the office of mayor, and that the act of 1895, as well as the act of 1889, of which it is amendatory, and which are relied on by the plaintiff as establishing the ineligibility of the defendant, are unconstitutional and void, because they except from their operation towns of less than 2,000 inhabitants, and are not, therefore, general laws.

The provisions of the act of 1889 (Acts 1889, p. 181), as amended, are incorporated in Acts 1895, p. 79, which reads as follows: "Section 1. That from and after the passage of this act, the councilmen and aldermen of the towns and cities of this state shall be incompetent to hold, except in towns of less than two thousand inhabitants, any other municipal office in said towns and cities during the time for which they are chosen; provided that nothing herein contained shall apply to any municipal office which is to be filled by appointment by the mayor; provided further that nothing in this act shall be so construed as to allow any one person to hold more than one municipal office at any one time, but any councilman or alderman appointed during his term to any other municipal office, shall resign his position as councilman or alderman before he shall be eligible to enter upon the duties of the appointed office." The objection urged to this act is that by its provisions an entire class is excepted, and the excepted class is left without any law on the subject, and, being so, the act is not general in its nature, and must be obnoxious to the constitutional provision, in that it is so limited as not to have uniform operation throughout the state; and the case of Mathis v. Jones, 84 Ga. 804, 11 S.E. 1018, is cited to support the proposition that general laws "cannot be deprived of their force in one part of the state without simultaneously depriving them of force in every other part." The proposition is sound, and the authority good; but the application is the fault of the argument, as we view it. A law which has uniform operation throughout the state must be a general law as contemplated by our constitution; and, quoting from Chief Justice Bleckley in the case cited supra: "A law may take its general nature either from its territorial comprehensiveness, or from the nature of its subject-matter, or from both. A law may be of a general nature, notwithstanding its subject-matter is of a local nature, its general nature being due alone to its territorial comprehensiveness. A law which is general, by reason of its territorial comprehensiveness only, can no more be limited in its operation territorially by a subsequent special law than one which is general in the nature of its subject-matter." The contention of the respondent in this case would seem to require that a law, to be general, must be universal in its operation. It will be noted that our constitution only requires it to have uniform operation,--that is, to apply to all persons, matters, or things which it is intended to affect; to operate on all which come within the scope of its provisions alike,--that is, uniformly. "Uniform" does not mean universal. People v. Judge of Twelfth Dist., 17 Cal. 547. The constitution is complied with, in this respect, when the law operates uniformly upon all persons who are brought within the relations and circumstances provided by it. McAunich v. Railroad Co., 20 Iowa 338. And a law is general under the constitution of Georgia, when it operates uniformly throughout the whole state upon the subject or class of subjects with which it purposes to deal. Lorentz v. Alexander, 87 Ga. 444, 13 S.E. 632. If it excepts one or several of those subjects or classes of subjects, it is not general. Id. A statute relating to persons or things as a class is a general law. Van Riper v. Parsons, 40 N. J. Law, 123; Wheeler v. City of Philadelphia, 77 Pa. St. 338. The application of this principle has been directly ruled by this court, in construing the statutes of this state, in Bone v. State, 86 Ga. 108, 12 S.E. 205, where the act construed authorized the superior court to sit in two sections in counties of this...