Jones v. Melchoir

• Decision Date: 16 October 1893
• Citation: 71 Miss. 115,13 So. 857
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: C. L. JONES v. GEORGE P. MELCHIOR

13 So. 857

71 Miss. 115

C. L. JONES v. GEORGE P. MELCHIOR

Supreme Court of Mississippi

October 16, 1893

FROM the circuit court of Bolivar county, HON. R. W. WILLIAMSON Judge.

The facts are sufficiently stated in the opinion.

Judgment reversed and petition dismissed.

Charles Scott, for appellant.

The act of 1890 is a local law, applicable to Bolivar county alone. It does not attempt to deal with the fiscal affairs of the whole state. Its subjects are not revised, consolidated or re-enacted in the code of 1892, nor are they repugnant thereto. It was therefore not repealed. Code 1892, § 3. As to what is a local law, see Bouvier's Law Dict Burrell's Law Dict.; 35 N.Y. 449; 43 Ib., 13; 13 Am. &amp Eng. Enc. Law, 984. It follows that the county treasurer could not accept the warrants tendered by the tax-collector, this being forbidden by the local act.

Fred Clark, for appellee.

So much of the act of 1890 as relates to the receipt and payment of county warrants has been repealed by § 348, code 1892, which is the general law of the state defining the rights of parties holding county warrants.

Section 2, code 1892, declares that the code shall go into effect and become the law of the land on November 1, 1892, "and shall supersede all prior statutes and clauses therein revised and hereby repealed."

Section 3 provides that "from and after the said first day of November, 1892, all acts and parts of acts, the subjects whereof are revised, consolidated and re-enacted in this code, or repugnant to the provisions contained therein, shall be, and the same are hereby, repealed."

Section 8 provides that private and local laws not revised and brought into the code shall not be affected unless it be expressly so provided.

By § 318 of the code, the entire matter of the registration of warrants to be issued is revised and brought forward. The latter clause of the section denies its application to warrants used in payment of taxes. Under this section, warrants are to be paid in the order of their issuance only when the board of supervisors so directs. It also contemplates that all warrants, whether registered or not, shall be receivable in the payment of taxes due to the county. By § 3803, code 1892, it is provided that warrants "shall be received in the payment of county taxes, unless otherwise provided by law." These and other sections show that the entire subject-matter has been revised and brought forward into the code; and the provisions of the act of 1890 are repugnant to the code provisions, and are therefore repealed.

OPINION

WOODS, J.

The appellee, in his character of sheriff and tax-collector of Bolivar county, filed his suit in mandamus, by which he sought to have the appellant, as treasurer of said county, required to receive from him $ 8,000 of the warrants of said county, which he, the appellee, had received in his collection of taxes, for various county funds, in the year 1892. These warrants, the appellee alleged in his petition, were legally receivable in payment of taxes in said county by virtue of §§ 904 and 3803, code 1892.

The appellant demurred to this petition, and for cause sets up that the local act of February 8, 1890, entitled "An act to pay off and fund the outstanding debt of Bolivar county, and provide a revenue therefor, and for other purposes," was unrepealed and operative, and that, under that act, he could not legally receive any of the said warrants in settlement of taxes collected by the appellee, it nowhere appearing in petitioner's complaint that the said warrants had been registered, as required by said local act, or that there was money in the county treasury to pay all warrants of that county of a prior date of issue.

This demurrer being overruled, the appellant set up the same defense by plea, and to this plea the appellee demurred. His demurrer being sustained, and appellant declining to make other plea, a judgment was entered for a peremptory mandamus on the treasurer in accordance with the prayer of the petition, and from these proceedings of the court and its final judgment, the county treasurer appeals.

It will be readily seen that the controversy is determinable on the solution of this question, viz.: Has the act of February 8 1890, been repealed by the provisions of the code of 1892? The act of February 8, 1890, is a purely local act, and was devised to meet the necessities of a single community. It was a scheme which purposed to deal in a peculiar way with the bonded and simple debt of that county, and which contained...