Jenkins v. Board of Sup'rs, Lee County
| Decision Date | 09 December 1940 |
| Docket Number | 34415 |
| Citation | 199 So. 90,189 Miss. 814 |
| Parties | JENKINS et al. v. BOARD OF SUP'RS, LEE COUNTY |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
APPEAL from the chancery court of Lee county, HON. JAS. A. FINLEY Chancellor.
Proceeding by Board of Supervisors of Lee County to invalidate bonds issued for purpose of paying judgment wherein J. W. Jenkins and others filed objections. From an adverse judgment, the objectants appeal. Affirmed.
Affirmed.
E. L Joyner and F. G. Thomas, both of Tupelo, for appellants.
There is no statutory authority in this state for the issuance of funding bonds for a supervisor's or road district.
Section 5977, Code of 1930, is the only authority for issuance of funding bonds and this statute provides: "Every municipality and every county in this state which has or may hereafter have legal and undisputed outstanding warrants or other obligations and insufficient funds in the treasury to pay them or any of them is empowered and required to at once prepare for, and take up such warrants and other obligations from the proceeds of serial bonds which shall be issued for such purpose, as is provided by law for issuance of bonds for the payment of outstanding obligations."
It is appellants' contention that this section applies only to county or municipal indebtedness and does not apply to supervisor's district indebtedness or obligation.
Mitchell & Clayton, of Tupelo, for appellee.
This court has many times held that Section 314 of Code of 1930 means just what it says--that a decree validating bonds under the provisions of this statute is conclusive and that no objections can afterward be raised as to such bond issue.
Parker v. Grenada County, 125 Miss. 617, 88 So. 172; Love v Yazoo City, 138 So. 603; Street v. Town of Ripley, 161 So. 859; Town of Decatur v. Brogan, 185 So. 809; Brown v. Simpson County, 187 So. 738.
The Brown v. Simpson County case, 187 So. 738, is authority for paying district indebtedness by issuing funding bonds under the provisions of Section 5977, Code of 1930. And in addition to this decision there is room for argument that the Legislature intended that bonds could be issued under the provisions of Section 5977 to pay district indebtedness as well as county indebtedness. Section 5977, Code of 1930, was Section 1 of Chapter 209, Laws of 1918, and Section 2 of said chapter is brought forward as Section 5978, Code of 1930. In other words, in Section 1 of said Chapter 209, Laws of 1918, it is provided that obligations of county or municipality may be paid by issuing funding bonds; and Section 2 of same act provides that "no interest-bearing debt, except as provided in Section next preceding (5977) shall be incurred in any county, municipality or other taxpaying district unless authorized in an election, etc."
It will be seen that the purpose of the Legislature was by Section 1 of said act (brought forward as Section 5977 of Code 1930) to require every county, municipality or other taxing district to pay all outstanding obligations, although the words, "other taxing district, " are not used in said section. This is manifest where Section 2 of same act is considered. The two sections were intended as a complete scheme to require any county having existing obligations to issue bonds to pay same (whether such obligations were incurred by a district or not), but that no other kind of bonds could be issued by a taxing district without an election.
In the case at bar, the Board found affirmatively that the bond issue when added to all other bonded indebtedness of the district did not exceed 10% of the assessed value of the taxable property of the district. Under the Brown v. Simpson County case, this was the only thing necessary to make the bonds valid.
The Third Supervisors District in Lee County is a separate road district of the county, and its existence as such was specifically recognized and declared by Chap. 922 Sp. Laws 1926. In a suit by the State Tax Collector, a judgment was rendered against the district for $ 14, 000; and there being...
To continue reading
Request your trial