Finan v. Mayor and City Council of Cumberland

Decision Date24 March 1928
Docket NumberNo. 65.,65.
PartiesFINAN v. MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF CUMBERLAND.
CourtMaryland Court of Appeals
141 A. 269

FINAN
v.
MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF CUMBERLAND.

No. 65.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

March 24, 1928.


Appeal from Circuit Court, Allegany County, in Equity; Albert A. Doub, Judge. "To be officially reported."

Suit by Thomas B. Finan against the Mayor and City Council of Cumberland. From a decree for defendants, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Argued before BOND, C. J., and URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT, DIGGES, PARKE, and SLOAN, JJ.

Richard F. McMullen, of Cumberland, for appellant.

William C. Walsh and Charles Z. Heskett, both of Cumberland, for appellees.

BOND, C. J. This case presents a question of the validity of an issue of bonds by the mayor and city council of Cumberland under

141 A. 270

the authority of an Act of Assembly of 1927, c. 411. The act directs specifically that $100,000 of the proceeds of sale of the bonds be advanced to the Allegany Hospital of Sisters of Charity, a private eleemosynary corporation which conducts a general hospital in the city, and it is questioned whether power can validly be given to the city to appropriate or advance public funds to such a corporation for its purposes. A total issue of $500,000 is provided for in the act, and the proceeds of sale of $400,000 are to be devoted to the erection and maintenance of a municipal hospital in Cumberland; the remaining $100,000 to be advanced to the Allegany Hospital as stated. The advance is, by the terms of the act, to be for the purpose of further hospitalization in or near the city of Cumberland, the fund to be used for the erection of buildings, and for additions and improvements; and the act provides that the money so advanced is to be returned upon demand in the event that the corporation shall within twenty years voluntarily relinquish the work of hospitalization in or near Cumberland.

That the use of public funds in the erection or maintenance of a general hospital by a governmental agency directly would be use for a proper, public purpose, there can be little if any doubt. In University of Maryland v. Williams, 9 Gill & J. 365, 397 (31 Am. Dec. 72), "a hospital created and endowed by the government for general purposes of charity" is given as an illustration of a public corporation; and in St. Mary's Industrial School v. Brown, 45 Md. 310, 333, it was recognized that under an express provision in its charter Baltimore city had power to erect or establish houses of correction or hospitals. No dispute of the propriety of that use under legislative sanction was before the court in those cases. For many years there has been general statutory authority given to municipal and county authorities in Maryland to provide hospitals or temporary places for the reception of the sick. Code, art. 43, § 62...

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