Moloy v. City of Chattanooga

• Decision Date: 31 August 1950
• Citation: 191 Tenn. 173,27 Beeler 173,232 S.W.2d 404
• Parties: MOLOY et al. v. CITY OF CHATTANOOGA. 27 Beeler 173, 191 Tenn. 173, 232 S.W.2d 404
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 404

232 S.W.2d 404

MOLOY et al. v. CITY OF CHATTANOOGA.

27 Beeler 173, 191 Tenn. 173, 232 S.W.2d 404

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

Aug. 31, 1950.

E. B. Baker, Harry J. Schaeffer and Joe N. Hunter, all of Chattanooga, for complainants.

Moon & Anderson, W. A. Wilkerson and E. K. Meacham, all of Chattanooga, for defendant.

TOMLINSON, Justice.

The policemen and firemen have filed a petition to rehear. The insistence therein renewed is that 'the Court erred in not holding that the petitioners were entitled to recover all funds deducted from their salaries after the passage of the 1935 Act by the Legislature [Priv. Acts 1935, c. 467], said act creating an express trust fund for the payment of these salaries, and a trust that estoppel would not apply to and against which the statute of limitations would not run'. The same insistence is made as to the 1927 Act, Priv. Acts 1927, c. 692.

If the rule of equitable estoppel does apply, and we have so held, then that is conclusive of the case, and renders unnecessary any consideration of the question as to whether the statute of limitations would bar the claims.

Under the 1927 Act, the salaries of these petitioners were paid out of the general funds of the City. The 1935 Act did not change this further than to provide in substance that if the general funds were insufficient to pay these salaries, then a certain portion of the deficiency under certain contingencies should be paid out of whatever might be left, if any, from delinquent taxes collected, after there had been spent from those delinquent taxes the amount which the City had elected to appropriate for other purposes.

The rights given by these two statutes to these firemen and policemen are not repudiated by applying the rule of equitable estoppel in this case. That rule simply precludes these firemen and policemen from asserting those rights, because their conduct has been such that the assertion of these rights is unconscientious and inequitable. The foundation of the rule 'is justice and good conscience. Its object is to prevent the unconscientious and inequitable assertion or enforcement of claims or rights which might have existed * * *'. Evans v. Belmont Land Co., 92 Tenn. 348, 365, 21 S.W. 670, 673. It 'is the effect of the voluntary conduct of a party, whereby he is absolutely precluded both at law and in equity for asserting rights which might perhaps have otherwise existed * * *'. Memphis Consol. Gas & Electric Co. v. Simpson, 118...