Hayden v. City Council

• Decision Date: 03 September 1898
• Parties: HAYDEN v. CITY COUNCIL OF MEMPHIS.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

47 S.W. 182

HAYDEN v. CITY COUNCIL OF MEMPHIS.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

September 3, 1898.

Error to circuit court, Shelby county; L. H. Estes, Judge.

Petition by Alf. T. Hayden against the city council of Memphis. From a judgment dismissing the petition, plaintiff brings error. Reversed.

J. J. Du Bose, for plaintiff in error. Metcalf & Walker, for defendant in error.

BEARD, J.

We have no doubt of the supervisory power of the circuit court of Shelby county over the city council of Memphis in the case presented in this record, and that, to determine whether that tribunal pursued legal methods in removing the plaintiff in error as a member of the council, that court could require, by its writ of certiorari, the record of the proceedings for the removal to be brought before it for a revision. Mr. Dillon, in volume 2 (4th Ed.) § 925, of his work on Municipal Corporations, is abundantly sustained by authority in saying that it is well settled in England that courts of superior and general jurisdiction will examine, on certiorari, the proceedings of inferior or special jurisdiction courts or officers; and, in section 925, in stating the unquestionable weight of authority in this country to be, "if an appeal be not given, or some specific mode of review provided, that the superior common-law courts will, on certiorari, examine the proceedings of municipal corporations, even although there be no statute giving this remedy; and, if it be found that they have exceeded their charter powers, or have not pursued those powers, or have not conformed to the requirements of the charter or law under which they have undertaken to act, such proceedings will be reversed or annulled. An aggrieved party is, in such case, entitled to a certiorari ex debito justitia." This court has had occasion frequently to recognize the extensive limits of this writ. In Mayor v. Pearl, 11 Humph. 248, it is said: "It [the writ] has been adopted by us as the almost universal method by which the circuit courts of general jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, exercise control over all inferior jurisdictions, however constituted and whatever their course of proceeding, as well where they have attempted to exercise a jurisdiction not confirmed as where there has been an irregular or erroneous exercise of jurisdiction, and in criminal proceedings as well as in civil. Instead of restricting the use of the certiorari to the proceedings of inferior courts, whose proceedings are not according to the course of the common law, and where, for that reason, a writ of error will not lie, it is held that it lies to remove the proceedings of all tribunals exercising jurisdiction under statutory regulations, whether in a summary way or by a mode of proceedings not according to common-law form." As possibly an extreme illustration of the exercise of this supervisory power, the case of Durham v. U. S., 4 Hayw. (Tenn.) 54, may be referred to, where the proceedings of a court-martial were brought into the circuit court by this writ, and a judgment assessing a fine was held void. Not content, however, with having the right to the writ of certiorari depend upon the principles of the common law, as they had been liberally applied in modern jurisprudence, it was guarantied to the citizens of this state by the constitution of 1833, and again by the present constitution. In addition, the legislature has sought to make effectual this constitutional right in Shannon's Code, §§ 4853, 4854, so that now it is well established in this state that "the writ of certiorari will lie upon sufficient cause shown, where no appeal is given; where an inferior tribunal, board, or officer exercising judicial functions has exceeded the jurisdiction conferred, or is acting illegally; where, in the judgment of the court, there is no other plain, speedy, or adequate remedy." Tomlinson v. Board, 88 Tenn. 1, 12 S. W. 414. In the present case we have a municipal board, exercising judicial functions in trying and removing from his corporate office one of its members, from whose judgment of amotion, confessedly, no appeal is given. It only therefore remains to be seen whether "sufficient cause" is shown by the petition for the issuance of the writ. Before considering that phase of the question, it is proper to say that we do not regard the cases of Wade v. Murry, 2 Sneed, 50, and Tomlinson v. Board, supra, as in the way of this conclusion, for in both of those cases the court found clear evidences of the intention of the legislature that the judgments of the special tribunal called in question there should not be the subject of review in other and superior jurisdictions,...