Munn v. Lentz

• Decision Date: 08 December 1931
• Docket Number: No. 152.,152.
• Citation: 256 Mich. 233,239 N.W. 298
• Parties: MUNN et al. v. LENTZ et al.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

256 Mich. 233

239 N.W. 298

MUNN et al.

v.LENTZ et al.

No. 152.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Dec. 8, 1931.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Barry County; Russell R. McPeek, Judge.

Separate suits by H. F. Munn and others against Frank C. Lentz and others consolidated for trial. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendants appeal.

Affirmed.

Argued before the Entire Bench, except POTTER, J.

Kim Sigler, of Hastings, for appellants.

James H. Mustard and Robert A. Waterman, both of Battle Creek, for appellees.

CLARK, J.

Pursuant to provisions of Act 319, Public Acts of 1927, § 7131, et seq., Comp. Laws 1929, and an January 2, 1931, the following question was submitted to the electors of Castleton township in Barry county; ‘Shall Castleton township be organized into a single school district?’ A majority voted ‘Yes,’ and thereafter a board of education was elected. There were ten school districts affected, six of which refused to turn over to the board of the township school district money, property, etc., but, on the contrary, each of said districts, as plaintiffs, and joined with its respective officers and certain taxpayers, as plaintiffs, instituted six proceedings in quo warranto against the township, the township school district, and the members of its board of education, as defendants, to test the validity of the organization and the existence of the township school district and the title of its officers. The suits were consolidated, tried tegother, and are so presented here.

Plaintiffs had judgments. Defendants have appealed.

One plaintiff district, fractional No. 2 of the townships of Hastings and Castleton, was created by Local Act No. 283, Local Acts of 1901, and to and including the time in question so remained. The local act provides: ‘The same to be organized in the same manner as school districts under the general law, whose boundaries are determined by the board of school inspectors.’ This is equivalent to saying that it became a primary school district (Act 164, c. 2, Public Acts 1881, section 4646 Comp. Laws 1897), and, as the reference is to ‘general law,’ that it was to function under general law as it might be from time to time. Cole v. Wayne Circuit Judge, 106 Mich. 692, 64 N. W. 741; Lewis' Sutherland, Stat. Const. (2d Ed.) § 405; Public Schools v. Kennedy, 245 Mich. 585, 223 N. W. 359.

Might the then township board of school inspectors (later township board, Acts 31 and 66, Public Acts of 1909), having power under general law to alter boundaries of primary school districts, on the day following the special legislative creation of this district, or on any later day, have taken the district apart and restored the parts to the other districts from which they had been taken? Might such board have destroyed this special legislative creation or revoked its special charter? It is apparent that it might not. The district as an entity could be altered or destroyed only by the Legislature itself, or by some agent exercising properly delegated power for that purpose.

The trial judge so held, and he prepared a well-reasoned and helpful opinion, from which we quote:

‘In School District v. Dean, 17 Mich. 223, it appeared that the Legislature by special act of 1867 established a new school district out of parts of three old ones in the same township. The new district was duly organized on the 1st day of March, 1867, and on April 2nd, the same year, the township board of school inspectors ‘assumed to set back to the old districts the territory carved out of them by the special act, and to dissolve the new district. * * *’ The Court said:

“It must be admitted that there is no middle ground. Either the district must be independent of change by the inspectors, or it must be as much under their sway as other districts. At a corporation, brought into existence by the direct act of the legislature, it could not be dependent upon any general act, or upon the inspectors, for its continuance; nor could it exist if its organic act should be repealed. It would, therefore, stand by itself as an independent corporate existence, and deriving no vital support from the law under which inspectors from districts; and it is difficult to see how it could be essentially altered without an alteration of the act, which stands, in some respects, in the place of a charter.' * * *

“There would necessarily be a period, then, when the corporation created by the act in question would be exempt from local interference. The legislature have not declared by this act, nor can it be implied from any other, when this period of exemption should terminate. It is a fair inference, then, that it was meant to be perpetual. The district in question was created by direct legislation, and a continuing independent power to dissolve it, vested in another body, would be anomalous. It would suppose two powers in operation at the same time, one of which would have the right to create, and the other, at the same instant, the right to destroy, while one of these conflicting authorities could only exist by the sufferance of the other.'

‘If it be urged in the instant case that the language of Local Act 283 of 1901, provides, in terms, that Fractional District No. 2 ‘be organized in the same manner an school districts under...