Hughes v. Ball
| Citation | 106 So. 626,140 Miss. 812 |
| Decision Date | 18 January 1926 |
| Docket Number | 25463 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Mississippi |
| Parties | HUGHES et al. v. BALL. [*] |
APPEAL AND ERROR. Appeal from refusal to set aside as void order creating school district dismissed as involving moot question, in view of subsequent valid order.
Appeal from decree adverse to plaintiffs in suit merely to set aside alleged void order creating school district, there being no allegation of threatened taxes, will be dismissed as involving only a moot question; a subsequent valid order creating the district having been passed before final decree.
HON. T P. DALE, Chancellor.
APPEAL from chancery court of Simpson county, HON. T. P. DALE Chancellor.
Suit by R. B. Hughes and another against F. M. Ball. From an adverse decree, plaintiffs appeal. Appeal dismissed.
Appeal dismissed.
W. M Lofton, for appellants.
The county school board sits as a court of special and limited jurisdiction and unless the jurisdictional facts appear in the orders that it passes, they are void. No presumption is indulged in favor of courts of special and limited jurisdiction, but the jurisdictional facts must appear of record and the tribunal must act in conformity with and be controlled by the authority conferred. The county school board in its efforts to pass this order was exercising a purely statutory authority, and when the record showed that it failed to follow the plain statutory provision its said order is void. See Garner v. Webster Co., 79 Miss. 565, 31 So. 210; Bolivar County v. Coleman et al., 71 Miss. 832, 15 So. 107.
I contend that the county school board had no authority during any scholastic year to consider a petition asking for affirmative action filed during a previous year. If the county school board in the location of school districts and fixing the boundaries thereof could act upon a petition on that subject, filed one year before, why could it not act upon a petition filed two years before, or five years, or ten years before? This observation merely shows the absurdity of the thing. It must be remembered that people change their minds. One might favor the establishment of a consolidated school district in 1924; and in 1925 he might be violently opposed to it. This case is very unlike the case of Liddell v. Noxapater School District, 92 So. 631.
The decree of the lower court is erroneous, should and will be reversed, and a decree entered in this court granting the appellants the relief sought.
Hilton & Hilton, for appellee.
It appears that notice of the school board meeting to be held January 16, 1925, was published respectively in accordance with the school acts of 1924. It appears from this order that it was merely an error and an oversight that the proper adjudicated facts were not written in the original order of July 7, 1924, showing that a majority of the patrons of the rural school had asked for the consolidation of the rural schools, and that the board being fully advised that the scrivener failed to write into the order the adjudicated facts, did then and there order, direct and adjudge the former order be amended to conform to the adjudicated facts, etc. Counsel, contra, objected to the introduction of this order. We say it was competent. 11 Cyc., page 764; Keeton v. Board of Supervisors, Clarke County, 117 Miss. 72.
In our opinion, this suit by appellant and complainant below was brought in the lower court and urged here on purely technical questions. While the original order of July 7 was not as full as it should have been, yet this has been corrected by their order of January 16, 1925, and we think, cures that defect. This whole record discloses that, as a matter of fact, the law was followed; and as a large majority of the patrons of those rural schools desired a consolidation, the school board heard their request, gave them the consolidated school, and...
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