People ex rel. Attorney General v. Holihan
| Decision Date | 30 January 1874 |
| Citation | 29 Mich. 116 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | The People on the relation of the Attorney General v. James Holihan |
Heard January 29, 1874
Information in the nature of quo warranto, to test respondent's right to hold the office of alderman of the tenth ward of Detroit. Judgment of ouster endered.
Judgment of ouster entered against the defendant.
D. C Holbrook, for the relator.
William P. Wells and Theodore Romeyn, for the respondent.
Christiancy, J., did not sit in this case.
This is an information filed by the attorney general against the defendant for intruding into and usurping the office of alderman in the city of Detroit.
The final purpose of the proceeding is to question the constitutional validity of the act entitled "An act to enlarge the corporate limits of the city of Detroit and to create an additional ward in said city," approved April 12, 1873; and also an act of the same session to correct this last, entitled "An act to detach certain territory from the townships of Hamtramck and Grosse Point, and to annex the same to the city of Detroit."
By this legislation it was sought to detach from the township of Hamtramck and annex to the city certain territory, and unite part of it to the tenth ward, and erect the residue into a new and additional ward designated as the eleventh. The defendant was recently elected as an alderman of this ward, and now assumes and claims to be legally in as such alderman, and to be entitled to exercise all the rights and powers of a lawful member of the common council of the city. At the time of the passage of the act, and when it took effect, the territory so detached by it from the township of Hamtramck formed, with the rest of the township, a part of and belonged to a separate and distinct representative district, according to an apportionment and division which had been before regularly made and settled, and the period when an alteration would be admissible under the constitution had not occurred, and will not occur for some time to come.
It is now maintained by the relator that the constitution, not merely by implication, but in express terms, forbade this act of legislation, and he particularly relies upon Art. IV., § 4, which is as follows:
The counsel for the defendant, admitting the strong bearing of this provision to sustain the position of the relator,...
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Kerlin v. City of Devils Lake
...v. Kreitz, 135 Ill. 591, 26 N. E. 704, is considerably in point, but the facts are too complicated to be here stated. In People v. Holihan, 29 Mich. 116, it is held that electors are only allowed to vote in their proper districts; that they cannot be residents of one district and at the sam......
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Red River Valley Brick Corporation v. City of Grand Forks
...invalid. People ex rel. Shumway v. Bennett, 29 Mich. 451, 18 Am. Rep. 107; Morton v. Holes, 17 N.D. 158, 115 N.W. 256; People ex rel. Atty. Gen. v. Holihan, 29 Mich. 116; State ex rel. Bolt v. Riordan, 73 Mich. 508, 41 482; State ex rel. Williams v. Sawyer County, 140 Wis. 634, 123 N.W. 248......
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Kerlin v. City of Devils Lake
...v. Kreitz, 135 Ill. 591, 26 N.E. 704, is considerably in point, but the facts are too complicated to be here stated. In People ex rel. Atty. Gen. v. Holihan, 29 Mich. 116, is held that electors are only allowed to vote in their proper districts; that they cannot be residents of one district......
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People ex rel. Agnew v. Graham
...and that a town election held at what would then be the proper place in the town if the law were unconstitutional was valid. In People v. Holihan, 29 Mich. 116,the public authorities attempted to change the boundaries of the voting districts, and the court held the action of the authorities......