Peay v. Graham
| Decision Date | 21 February 1931 |
| Citation | 35 S.W.2d 568,162 Tenn. 153 |
| Parties | PEAY v. GRAHAM, Comptroller, et al. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Appeal from Chancery Court, Davidson County; James B. Newman Chancellor.
Suit by Mrs. Austin Peay against Edgar J. Graham, Comptroller, and others. Decree for complainant, and respondents appeal.
Affirmed and remanded.
Austin Peay, Jr., of Clarksville, and Wm. J. Wade, Norman Farrell Avery Handly, Charles C. Trabue, and Thomas H. Malone, all of Nashville, for complainant.
L. D Smith, of Knoxville, and R. E. Maiden, of Dresden, for defendants.
This suit was brought to enjoin the payment of an appropriation made by the Legislature at the extra session of 1929 of $100 to each of its members, the act reciting that it was for stenographic hire and other unenumerated official expenses. Sustaining the insistence that the appropriation was in effect an increase of compensation, above that fixed by the Constitution, the chancellor overruled the demurrer of defendants, and issued the injunction. The language of the act, being section 4--A of chapter 32 of the Acts of the Extra Session of 1929, is as follows:
"There shall be appropriated and paid out of any moneys in the Treasury, to each member of the Legislature, the sum of One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) for stenographic hire and other extraordinary official expenses necessarily incurred by each member of the Legislature at this extra session in the court of and in consequence of their duties as legislators, and the Legislature declares as a fact that every member of this body has expended, at this extra session, at least the amount above set out for the official expenses above mentioned; and the State Treasurer is hereby authorized and directed to pay said sums of money as above set out."
The constitutionality of similar appropriations has been passed on by this court in State ex rel. v. Thomason, 142 Tenn. 527, 221 S.W. 491, 495, and Peay v. Nolan, 157 Tenn. 222, 7 S.W.2d 815, 818, 60 A. L. R. 408. In the first of these the appropriation was sustained; in the latter denied.
In the Thomason Case it was held (1) that no appropriation could be constitutionally made for an increase of compensation to members of the General Assembly; and (2) that an appropriation for official expenses, as distinguished from compensation, may be constitutionally made. These propositions were reaffirmed in Peay v. Nolan. The cases differ in this: In the Thomason Case it was conceded that the appropriation was in fact for official expenses; in the Nolan Case it was held that the appropriation, while nominally for official expenses, was in effect for compensation; this being the determinative fact in issue. In the instant case the attack on the appropriation is on the identical ground relied on in the Nolan Case, and the question now is whether or not the case now presented may be distinguished from that presented in the Nolan Case.
Two distinctions are attempted to be made. The first relates to a variance in the form or language of the legislative enactment; the second to a difference in the amount. Under the first head it is stressed that the enactment now before us contains language, not only designating the appropriation as for expenses, as was true of that considered in the Nolan Case, but goes further and expressly "declares as a fact that every member of this body has expended, at this extra session, at least the amount above set out for the official expenses above mentioned." The insistence made for appellants is that this declaration of a fact, which is the predicate of the enactment, and essential to its constitutionality, is a finding of fact conclusive on the courts.
Reliance is had on approving statements of this general rule in both of our cases above cited. For example, in State ex rel. v. Thomason, it was said that "this declaration of the Legislature is a conclusive finding of fact," etc., and in Peay v. Nolan that "the rule that every inquiry into the validity of a legislative act is approached with the presumption that the Legislature observed the Constitution, and when validity depends upon the existence of certain facts, the legislative determination is conclusive." But all the authorities cited for support of this general statement of the rule clearly recognize that the legislative declaration is never binding on the courts unless consistent with reason and common knowledge.
In Block v. Hirsh, 256 U.S. 135, 41 S.Ct. 458, 459, 65 L.Ed. 865, 16 A. L. R. 165, a case dealing with the regulation of rentals in what was declared to be a public emergency, the court, voicing the general rule, observed that "a declaration by a legislature concerning public conditions that by necessity and duty it must know, is entitled at least to great respect." However, in a later case reviewing an act purporting to continue in force the original Rent Act, the court declined to be bound by the legislative finding and declaration that the same emergency existed as when the original Rent Act was passed in 1919. The court held that changed conditions in the District of Columbia were "a matter of public knowledge." Said the court:
Chastleton Corp. v. Sinclair, 264 U.S. 543, 44 S.Ct. 405, 406, 68 L.Ed. 841.
Here the court clearly recognized its right and duty, even in a case in which public policy and rights were involved, to look behind the declaration, or finding, of the Legislature, and give application to contradictory facts of common knowledge, of which the courts must take judicial notice.
Motlow v. State, 125 Tenn. 559, 145 S.W. 177, 180, L. R. A. 1916F, 177, is cited for the rule in State ex rel. v. Thomason. Here this court was dealing with the question of the reasonableness of a classification under the police powers, and said, "When the classification in such a law is called in question, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, the existence of that state of facts at the time the law...
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