Downing v. The Indiana State Board of Agriculture
| Decision Date | 17 October 1891 |
| Docket Number | 16,152 |
| Citation | 28 N.E. 614,129 Ind. 453 |
| Parties | Downing et al. v. The Indiana State Board of Agriculture |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Original Opinion of June 19, 1891, Reported at: 129 Ind. 443.
Counsel for appellants earnestly insist that there should be a rehearing in this cause. Counsel state in their brief that and then follow with an able discussion of these propositions, seeking to show that they are not good law.
As stated in the original opinion, the sole question presented in this case is whether or not the appellee, the Indiana State Board of Agriculture, is a private corporation. If it is a private corporation, then the act of 1891 both impairs the contract between the State and the appellee, as made by the charter of 1851, and it seeks to take its property without due process of law.
If the act of 1851 created and made the appellee a private corporation, then the property it holds as such corporation is as sacred as that of any individual, and any attempt by legislation to take such property from the corporation without compensation would be to impair the charter and take the property without due process of law. To sustain the decision it is only necessary to establish by sound reasoning and by authority that the appellee is a private corporation. That it is such a corporation we think is fully supported by the authorities cited in the original opinion.
Counsel assert, in effect, that, as the members of the board have no financial interest in the property of the corporation, they hold it in trust for the people of the State, that it is the same as the State capitol, or any other property of the State, belonging to the whole people of the State, hence is State property, and subject to legislative control, as is any other property of the State. And it is further asserted that there can not be any corporation either public or private, without natural members; that if all the members of a private corporation die, or all of the citizens of a government die or emigrate, the corporation is extinct, and that the members of this corporation are to be elected by certain local agricultural societies, and it is possible, and, indeed, probable that these local societies may go out of existence or refuse to elect, and then the query is made as to what will become of the property.
This latter proposition is, we think, foreign to the case. There is no more probability of these local societies going out of existence or refusing to elect, than that those whose duty it is to elect members of like boards, such as trustees of colleges or hospitals, will refuse to elect. The question propounded is not presented in this case, though we think the law would not allow its purpose to fail by reason of the failure or refusal of those...
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