Laney v. State

• Decision Date: 04 June 1919
• Docket Number: Civil 1665
• Citation: 181 P. 186,20 Ariz. 416
• Parties: L. M. LANEY, County Attorney of Maricopa County, State of Arizona, Appellant, v. STATE ex rel. D. P. JONES, L. H. NORTH, M. G. PHELPS, W. W. DOBSON and ELIJAH ALLEN, Appellees
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

181 P. 186

20 Ariz. 416

L. M. LANEY, County Attorney of Maricopa County, State of Arizona, Appellant, v. STATE ex rel. D. P. JONES, L. H. NORTH, M. G. PHELPS, W. W. DOBSON and ELIJAH ALLEN, Appellees

Civil No. 1665

Supreme Court of Arizona

June 4, 1919

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the county of Maricopa. F. H. Lyman, Judge. Reversed and remanded, with directions.

Mr. L M. Laney and Mr. Thomas P. Walton, for Appellant.

Mr. J L. Gust and Mr. T. J. Prescott, for Appellees.

OPINION

ROSS, J.

Appellees concede the correctness of appellant's statement of the facts of the case, and we therefore adopt it:

"This is a mandamus proceeding brought in the superior court of Maricopa county by the appellees for the purpose of compelling the appellant, the county attorney of said Maricopa county, to bring a quo warranto action against W. M. Scott, F. D. Rowell, and G. W. Lines, to oust them from further exercising the powers, franchises, and privileges of a board of education for the Gilbert single district high school. The appellees are the members of the board of education of the Mesa Union High School.

"Gilbert school district is officially known as school district No. 41 of Maricopa county, and Mesa school district is officially known as school district No. 4 of Maricopa county.

"On October 19, 1907, Mesa union high school district was duly organized and incorporated of and from the territory comprised within school district numbered 4, 10, 19, 26, 29, 41, and 57, all of Maricopa county.

"On November 2, 1907, the high school of said Mesa union high school district was, pursuant to an election duly had, located in the town of Mesa in said school district No. 4 of said Mesa union high school district, and at the time of instituting this action in the court below the Mesa union high school district, with boundaries as then existing, was maintaining a high school for said district in said town of Mesa.

"On June 19, 1917, said Gilbert school district, being school district No. 41, and theretofore part of Mesa union high school district, did hold an election for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a high school in said Gilbert school district, and did, in all respects, comply with the provisions of chapter 5 of the Session Laws of 1917 of Arizona, entitled: 'An act to amend paragraph 2770, chapter 13, title 11, Revised Statutes of Arizona, 1913, Civil Code, providing for the establishment and maintenance of high schools.' It is conceded by both sides that if said act, being chapter 5, Laws of 1917, is in all respects valid and constitutional, then Gilber High School, by virtue of its said election of June 19, 1917, and the further proceedings pursuant thereto, became, and at the time of instituting this suit in the lower court was a validly organized and subsisting high school district. If said act of 1917, pursuant to which Gilbert high school district was organized is a valid law, then the county attorney of Maricopa county, the appellant herein, should not be compelled by mandamus to seek by quo warranto proceedings to oust the trustees or board of education of said Gilbert high school district from office. If said chapter 5, Laws of 1917, is unconstitutional and void, then said Gilbert high school district is not a valid high school district, the board of education thereof are unlawfully exercising their functions as such officers, and the county attorney should, and is ready and willing to, bring a quo warranto action to prevent the members of said board of education of Gilbert high school district from further acting as such officers.

"The case was decided in the court below solely upon the pleadings, which, in the chronological order of their being filed, are as follows, to wit: Petition for writ of mandamus; order that alternative writ issue; alternative writ of mandamus; return and answer to writ and petition (including demurrer for insufficiency of facts); demurrer to return and answer to writ and petition.

"The court below made an order overruling the defendant's demurrer to the plaintiff's petition, and sustained the plaintiff's demurrer to the defendant's answer. Thereupon the defendant, having elected to stand upon his demurrer and answer, the court made an order for judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, pursuant to which the written judgment and order that peremptory writ of mandamus issue was filed on April 19, 1918."

The appellant's assignments challenge the correctness of the ruling of the court on the demurrers, and, of course, the correctness of the judgment that was entered.

The only question considered by the lower court, and the only question raised on appeal, is the constitutionality of chapter 5, Laws of 1917.

Further quoting appellant, which quotation appellees concede is correct, the constitutional validity of chapter 5 was assailed by appellees upon the three following grounds:

" (2) That the title of the act is violative of section 13 of subdivision 2 of article 4 of the Constitution of Arizona, which is as follows: 'Sec. 13. Every act shall embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith, which subject shall be expressed in the title; but if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be embraced in the title.

"(2) That said act constitutes an unlawful attempt on the part of the Legislature to delegate the power of dismembering union high school districts to electors of a portion of such districts.

"(3) That said act is an unlawful attempt to confer privileges upon a portion of the electors of a union high school district which are not conferred upon the remaining electors of the union high school district."

Chapter 5 is an amendatory statute of paragraph 2770, Civil Code, reading, before the amendment, as follows:

"2770. Any school district having an average daily attendance of two hundred or more pupils may, by a majority vote of the qualified school electors thereof, establish and maintain a high school, or two or more adjoining school districts having a joint average daily attendance of two hundred or more pupils may unite and form a union high school district for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a high school therein at the expense of such district or union high school district."

The change in this paragraph by the amendment, which is the bone of contention, is the following added proviso:

"Provided, that no such high school district shall be formed of territory already embodied in any high school district, unless the remaining territory of the original district shall be contiguous and shall have an assessed valuation of three million ($3,000,000) dollars or more; provided further, that when a new district shall be formed under the terms of this act from territory already included in a union high school district, such territory shall no longer be included in such original high school district."

It is claimed that the subject of the organization of new high school districts out of territory included in and constituting a part of an already existing union high school district is not expressed in the title of chapter 5, and is not germane to nor connected with the title of said chapter. The effect of the amendment was to extend the privilege of establishing high schools to certain communities or districts from which the privilege had been withheld, or perhaps more correctly, to which it had not been granted by the law before its amendment. It is contended that the context of the amendment was not foreshadowed by this subject as expressed in the title. It is not said what the title, "The Establishment and Maintenance of High Schools," would authorize by way of legislation, but it is strenuously contended that it is not broad enough to prmit legislation granting the privilege of forming a high school out of territory included in an established high school district.

An analysis of the contention of appellees, when laid bare, is that the title should have gone further and indicated or announced that the purpose of the act was to provide for the organization of high schools out of territory already included in established high school districts. That, in failing thus to index the subject to be treated in the context, the act was misleading and misinforming. Clearly, the title contained "but one subject" -- High Schools, Their Establishment and Maintenance -- and quite as clearly the legislature did not depart from the subject.

In State Board of Control v. Buckstegge, 18 Ariz. 277, 158 P. 837, we considered the clause of the Constitution limiting every act of legislation to one subject and matters properly connected therewith, and requiring the subject to be expressed in the title, and laid down this general rule:

"This provision of the Constitution does not require that the title of an act should minutely and in great detail describe the legislation proposed; it is not necessary that the title be a synopsis or a...