Elder v. Territory

Citation3 Wash.Terr. 438,19 P. 29
PartiesELDER ET AL., SCHOOL DIRECTORS v. TERRITORY EX REL. CAMPBELL, COUNTY TREASURER.
Decision Date28 January 1888
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Washington

Appeal from Second district court.

Application for mandamus by the territory of Washington ex rel. F. Campbell, county treasurer, against M. H. Elder C. H. Manning, and J. P. Smith, directors of school-district No. 2, Pierce county. The district court sustained a demurrer to defendants' answer, and from that order they appeal.

Evans, Sears & Hudson, for appellants.

B W. Cousin, Pros. Atty., for appellee.

TURNER, J.

The appellants, in their capacity as school directors, came into possession of $300, paid to them by the Ph nix Insurance Company of Brooklyn, N. Y., as satisfaction for the loss by fire in their district of a school building insured by said company. The school-district to which said building belonged having been thereafter divided, and the county treasurer deeming it his duty, under the law, to divide the sum collected upon the loss of the school building between the old and new districts, made demand upon the school directors to pay said sum of $300 into the county treasury. The directors failed to comply with said demand. Thereupon the prosecuting attorney for the county set forth all the facts in an affidavit, and applied to the district court for an alternative writ of mandamus, which the district court granted. The appellants, for answer to the alternative writ, set up the following among other defenses: "(3) For further return, answer, and defense respondents allege that immediately upon the receipt of said money from said insurance company the same was deposited in the Tacoma National Bank to the credit of school-district number two and that soon thereafter a meeting of the electors of said district was duly called, and the disposition of said money was referred to them by these respondents, and that at said meeting the said electors unanimously resolved to proceed to the construction of a school-house in the place of the one destroyed by fire, and instructed and directed these respondents to appropriate the money so received by them to the construction of said school-house, so far as the same should go; that, in obedience to said instruction and direction, these respondents appropriated the whole of said money towards the construction of said new school-house." The district court sustained a demurrer to the...

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