Jackson County v. Worth

• Decision Date: 13 February 1922
• Docket Number: 22390
• Citation: 90 So. 588,127 Miss. 813
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: JACKSON COUNTY v. WORTH

90 So. 588

127 Miss. 813

JACKSON COUNTY v. WORTH

No. 22390

Supreme Court of Mississippi

February 13, 1922

1. PUBLIC LANDS. Oil lease without provision for annual rent held void as in violation of statute.

Chapter 351, Laws 1918, providing for the leasing of sixteenth section school lands, requires the payment of annual rent and also limits the power of the board of supervisors to leasing lands not already leased, and where the board undertook to lease such lands for a consideration of one dollar and one-eighth of the oil and gas produced for a period of fifteen years, with no provision for annual rent and where there was no outstanding lease for agricultural purposes, the order of the board leasing such lands under chapter 351, Laws 1918, was void.

2. PUBLIC LANDS Statutes. Statutes in pari materia considered and intent deduced from them considered as a whole; statutes held to prohibit lease of school lands for longer than one year without consent of inhabitants.

In construing statutes all statutes in pari materia are taken into consideration, and the legislative intent deduced from them considered as a whole. Acts 1918, chapter 351, when considered thus with section 4711, Code of 1906 (section 7522, Hemingway's Code), providing for the obtaining of the consent of the inhabitants of the township before leasing sixteenth section school lands, and that no lease for a longer term than one year can be made unless such consent is obtained, a lease for fifteen years cannot be made unless the consent of the inhabitants of the township is obtained in the manner required by law. There is no conflict or inconsistency between chapter 351, Laws of 1918, and section 4711 of the Code of 1906, and the latter act does not amend, modify, or repeal the Code section herein referred to.

3. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. Constitutionality of statute will not be decided where the contract made under its provisions is void for noncompliance with its terms.

Where the constitutionality of a statute is sought to be tested in a suit, the court will not decide such question unless necessary to a disposition of the case; and where a contract made under the provisions of the statute is void because of noncompliance with the terms of the statute, the constitutionality of the statute will not be decided.

4. PUBLIC LANDS. Chancery court may have an account stated as to illegal lease of school funds.

Where the board of supervisors makes an illegal lease of sixteenth section school lands, the chancery court, under section 4716 Code of 1906 (section 7527, Hemingway's Code), may have an account stated, and should refund to the lessee any money or property paid for the lease over and above the rents issues, and profits of the lease.

HON. V A. GRIFFITH, Chancellor.

APPEAL from chancery court of Jackson county, HON. V. A. GRIFFITH, Chancellor.

Bill by George W. Worth against Jackson County. Judgment for the plaintiff, and the defendant appeals. Affirmed and remanded.

Judgment affirmed, and cause reversed.

Denny & Heidelberg, for appellant.

As a general rule, all contracts or agreements which involve, or have for their object, a violation of the law are illegal. It is immaterial, as far as the legality is concerned, whether the agreement is forbidden by the common law, or whether by statute, or, generally speaking, whether the thing forbidden is malum in se, or merely malum prohibitum. No principle of law is better settled than that a party to an illegal contract cannot come into a court of equity, or law, and ask to have his illegal projects carried out; nor can he set up a case in which he must necessarily disclose an illegal purpose as the groundwork of his claim. The law will not aid either party to an illegal agreement. It leaves the parties where it finds them. Daniels v. Tearney, 120 U.S. 420, 26 L.Ed. 187.

The general rule is the same both at law and in equity and whether the contract is executory or executed, the object of the rule refusing relief to either party where the contract is executed, is not to give validity to the transaction, but to deprive the parties of all right to have either enforcement or relief from the illegal agreement. In such cases the defense of illegality prevails, not as a protection to the defendant, but as a disability of complainant. The court does not give effect to the contract, but merely refuses its aid to undo what the parties have already done. Lowenberg v. Klien, 87 So. 653; Mitchell v. Campbell, 111 Miss. 806, 72 So. 231; Belton v. Williams, 109 Miss. 74, 67 So. 849; Woodson v. Hopkins, 85 Miss. 171, 37 So. 1000; McWilliams v. Phillips, 51 Miss. 196; Dean v. McLendon, 30 Miss. 343; Hoover v. Pierce, 26 Miss. 227; Wooten v. Miller, 15 Miss. 380; Walton v. Dustin, 49 Miss. 569.

Under these authorities, appellant submits that, if the charge in the bill that the agreement here under consideration is illegal be true, then this court will not give the relief prayed for, inasmuch as the two parties are in pari delicto, regardless of appellee's proclaimed innocence and ignorance of the law governing the subject-matter of the agreement; and, consequently, the second ground of demurrer is well taken.

Appellee, by his bill, challenges the authority of appellant, through its board of supervisors, to grant the oil and gas rights and privileges as undertaken. Appellant submits that the board of supervisors had ample authority therefor, independent of chapter 351, of the Laws of Mississippi, of 1918. Without going into the history of the donation by the state of Georgia of sixteenth section lands, to the United States, in trust, for educational purposes, and the transfer of that trust to the state of Mississippi by act of Congress, which is interesting and familiar history, we assert that the legislature acting under the provisions of chapter 129 of the Code of 1906 and acts amendatory thereof, conferred on the boards of supervisors full jurisdiction and control of sixteenth sections and delegated to such boards the active administration of the trust which was reposed in the state affecting sixteenth sections and neither the courts nor the law department of the state have any jurisdiction, power or authority to supervise or control the boards in the matter of the administration of the trust, nor to fix or direct the mode, manner or terms upon which the oil or gas rights and privileges upon and from such section should be sold.

Court will not interfere with boards of supervisors in the lawful exercise of jurisdiction committed to them by law on the ground that their actions are characterized by lack of wisdom or sound discretion. Monroe County v. Strong, 78 Miss. 570; Rotenbery v. Board of Supervisors, 67 Miss. 471; Jefferson Davis County v. James Sumrall Lumber Co., 96 Miss. 530, 49 So. 611.

If the county has all power necessary to carry out the purpose of the grant by jurisdiction and control, as declared in the last above cited case, the question of what was the purpose of the grant has been by this court fully answered in Dantzler Lbr. Co. v. The State, 97 Miss. 455, from which we quote: "While it is plain that it is the purpose of the Constitution to forever retain the title to these lands in the trustees for the use and benefit of the schools, it is also plain that the section contemplated that these lands should be made revenue bearing, so as to be a benefit to the schools."

In Moss Point Lumber Co. v. Harrison County, 89 Miss. 448, 42 So. 290, it is held that a lessee of school lands is conclusively presumed, in the absence of stipulations in the lease to the contrary, to have taken the lease for agricultural purposes and not to have any right to cut the timber therefrom.

And in Dantzler case, supra, it is held that under the section of the Constitution and of the Code authorizing county supervisors to sell the timber on such lands the board of supervisors may permit the purchaser of the timber to enter the land and remove the timber, and to burden the land with the support thereof until removed, and the word "lands in the Constitution and laws prohibiting the sale of school lands includes the soil only and not the timber growing thereon, nor other products found there in its natural state.

In State v. Blodgett, 110 Miss. 768, 70 So. 710, it is held that a board of supervisors has full power, in the exercise of its discretion, to sell timber on sixteenth sections lands to the lessee of the land or any one else.

In addition to the power of the board of supervisors to sell the product in its natural state found on such lands, the legislature of 1918 enacted a law authorizing and empowering the board of supervisors of Jackson county to lease for oil and gas purposes sixteenth sections lands and to provide how funds arising therefrom shall be expended.

The act of the legislature, sections 5, 6 and 7, as embodied in chapter 351, of the Laws of 1918, is not of such nature or character as to come within the constitutional prohibition against the enactment of local, private or special laws, and particularly subdivision (P) and subdivision (U) of section 90, article 4, of the state Constitution.

There is no statute requiring the consent of the inhabitants of the township as a prerequisite to a valid sale or grant of oil and gas privileges on sixteenth sections and in the absence of such statute the lease or grant is valid without the assent of the inhabitants of the township. Jones v. Madison County, 72 Miss. 777, 18 So. 87.

We submit that the board of supervisors were fully authorized to pursue any course or adopt any method of selling the oil or gas and all other products in their natural state from the sixteenth section as it may have seen fit so long as the statute does not provide to the contrary.

...