People ex rel. Fitzgerald v. Stitt

• Decision Date: 05 December 1917
• Docket Number: No. 11530.,11530.
• Citation: 280 Ill. 553,117 N.E. 784
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. FITZGERALD et al. v. STITT et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

280 Ill. 553

117 N.E. 784

PEOPLE ex rel. FITZGERALD et al.

v.STITT et al.

No. 11530.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Oct. 23, 1917.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 5, 1917.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Woodford County; George W. Patton, Judge.

Proceeding in the nature of quo warranto by the People, on the relation of Wm. H. Fitzgerald and others, against Frank B. Stitt and others. From judgment of ouster and fine, defendants appeal. Reversed and remanded.W. L. Ellwood, of Peoria, and John F. Bosworth, of El Paso, for appellants.

Ernest J. Henderson, State's Atty., of Minonk, and Louis Fitz Henry and Barry & Morrissey, all of Bloomington, and Edward Riley, of Minonk, for appellees.

CARTER, C. J.

This is a quo warranto proceeding brought in the circuit court of Woodford county to oust appellants from the offices of president and members of the board of education of district No. 375, situated partly in Woodford county and partly in McLean county. Said district was organized under the Township High School Act of June 5, 1911, which this court declared unconstitutional in People v. Weis, 275 Ill. 581, 114 N. E. 331. Issues were joined in this case before that decisionholding the law unconstitutional was rendered, and on trial before a jury appellants were found not guilty. The appellees prayed and perfected an appeal to this court, and the judgment in the original proceeding was reversed in People v. Stitt, 275 Ill. 593, 114 N. E. 336, following the reasoning in the case of People v. Weis, supra. When the case was redocketed in the circuit court appellants prayed and obtained leave of court to file additional pleas. Those pleas set up an attempt to organize under the act of 1911, the alleged election of appellants as a board of education on March 20, 1915, and that since said election they had been acting as such board and conducting a high school in said district. The pleas averred that the district was a de facto one, and that the appellants were de facto officers thereof. Demurrers interposed to these additional pleas were sustained by the trial court and judgment of ouster and a fine of $1 entered against appellants. This appeal was thereafter prayed and perfected from that judgment.

The Legislature at its last session passed a law which was approved by the Governor June 14, 1917 (Laws 1917, p. 744), which reads as follows:

‘Section 1. Be it enacted by the people of the state of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly: That in all cases where a majority of the inhabitants of any contiguous and compact territory voting on the proposition, having voted at any election called for the purpose by a county superintendent of schools in favor of the organization of such territory into a high school district, and when at a subsequent election similarly called and held a board of education has been chosen for such district, each such election is hereby made legal and valid and such territory is hereby declared legally and validly organized and established as a high school district, and a valid and existing school district and body politic and corporate of this state for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a high school. The board of education acting for each such districtis hereby declared to be the duly constituted corporate authority thereof, and each such board shall hereafter consist of a president and six members, and shall be elected and organized in the same manner and have the powers and discharge the duties of boards of education of school districts as provided by sections 123, 125, 126, 126a and 127 of an act of the General Assembly of the state of Illinois entitled ‘An act to establish and maintain a system of free schools,’ approved June 12, 1909, as said sections now exist or may from time to time be amended.

‘Sec. 2. All acts and proceedings heretofore done, had or performed by each such district and the persons from time to time elected and acting as the board of education thereof, such as are authorized to be done, had or performed by school districts or boards of education thereof by the general school laws of this state are hereby declared to be legal and valid in all respects.

‘Sec. 3. Whenever there are two such districts which overlap in territory, that district which shall have first established and now continues to conduct a high school is hereby validated and confirmed.

‘Sec. 4. All pending actions attacking the organization of districts coming under the provisions of this act shall abate.’

Section 5 provides that the invalidity of one section shall not affect the remainder of the act, and section 6 contains an emergency clause, providing that the act shall go into force and effect at once.

[3] Counsel for appellees most earnestly insist that this so-called curative act can have no effect upon this suit and cannot validate township high school districts organized under the law of 1911, as that law has been held unconstitutional. ‘A curative statute is necessarily retrospective in character and may be enacted to cure or validate errors or irregularities in legal or administrative proceedings, except such as are jurisdictional or affect substantive rights, and also to cure or give effect to contracts between parties which might otherwise fall for failure to comply with technical legal requirements. Although a retrospective statute affecting and changing vested rights is very generally considered in this country as founded on unconstitutional principles and consequently inoperative and void, this dectrine is not understood to apply to remedial statutes, which may be of a retrospective nature, provided they do not impair contracts or disturb absolute vested rights and only go to confirm rights already existing, and, in furtherance of the remedy, by curing defects add to the means of enforcing existing obligations. Such statutes have been held valid when clearly just and reasonable and conducive to the general welfare, even though they might operate in a degree upon existing rights.’ 6 R. C. L. 320. ‘If the thing wanting or which failed to be done, and which constitutes the defect in the proceedings, is something the necessity for which the Legislature might have dispensed with by prior statute, then it is not beyond the power of the Legislature to dispense with it by subsequent statute, and if the irregularity consists in doing some act which the Legislature might have made immaterial by prior law it is equally competent to make the same immaterial by a subsequent law.’ Cooley's Const. Lim. (7th Ed.) 531. ‘The only limitation upon the power of the Legislature in this respect seems to be that the act ratified and confirmed must be one which it was lawful for the Legislature to authorize in the first instance, and that the power be so exercised as not to infringe or divest property rights and vested interests of persons which are secure against such legislative action.’ People v. City of Rock Island, 271 Ill. 412, 111 N. E. 291. See, also, on this question, People v. Wisconsin Central Railroad Co., 219 Ill. 94, 76 N. E. 80; 8 Cyc. 765; 1 Kent's Com. (14th Ed.) 545, 546. This doctrine as to curative statutes applies as well to laws that have been held unconstitutional as to those laws that have been held invalid for other reasons. Ross v. Board of Supervisors, 128 Iowa, 427, 104 N. W. 506,1 L. R. A. (N. S.) 431;Carlstadt Nat. Bank v. Borough of Hasbrouck Heights, 83 N. J. Law, 383, 84 Atl. 1069;State v. Abraham, 64 Wash. 621, 117 Pac. 501;Whitlock v. Hawkins, 105 Va. 242, 53 S. E. 401; Donley v. City of Pittsburgh, 147 Pa. 348, 23 Atl. 394,30 Am. St. Rep. 738. See, also, Tiaco v. Forbes, 228 U. S. 549, 33 Sup. Ct. 585, 57 L. Ed. 960.

Counsel for appellees strenuously insist that the provisions of this curative act would not have been valid and constitutional if those provisions were a part of the original act authorizing, in the first instance, the organization of high school districts. The original act of 1911 was declared unconstitutional by this court because it did not permit all sections of the state similarly situated to organize high school districts, but made arbitrary classifications without any reasonable or sound basis therefor. The only provision of the Constitution which bears directly on the method of organizing school districts is section 1 of article 8, which reads:

‘The General Assembly shall provide a thorough and efficient system of free schools, whereby all children of this state may receive a good common school education.’

There is nothing in that section, or in any other part of the Constitution, which provides the manner in which school districts shall be formed or the size and extent of the population, or that requires that the organization of the district shall be submitted to a vote of the people. Therefore the provision of section 1 of this curative act which provides that any compact and contiguous territory may organize into a school district, no matter where located, would necessarily be valid under the provisions of the Constitution as construed by this court, and, of course, the provision as to a majority of the inhabitants of such compact and contiguous territory having voted to organize a district does not render this section unconstitutional. Beyond question, a statute containing the provisions of section 1 of the curative act would have been valid had constitutional as an original act.

But counsel for appellees further argue very earnestly that this curative act is a local or special law, as it now confers rights upon the inhabitants of certain territories in the state that it does not confer upon other territories of like population and under like conditions. Whether laws are general or special does not depend upon the number of those who are within the scope of their operation. They ‘are general and uniform, not because they operate upon every person in the state, for they do not, but because every person who is brought within the relations and...