People ex rel. Miller v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 05 June 1908
• Citation: 84 N.E. 1044,234 Ill. 416
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. MILLER v. CITY OF CHICAGO et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

234 Ill. 416

84 N.E. 1044

PEOPLE ex rel. MILLER

v.CITY OF CHICAGO et al.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April 23, 1908.

Rehearing Denied June 5, 1908.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Cook County; John Gibbons, Judge.

Mandamus by the people, on the relation of James J. Miller, against the city of Chicago and others. From a judgment reinstating relator as a police officer, defendants appeal. Reversed and remanded, with instructions.

Clyde L. Day and George W. Miller (Edward J. Brundage, Corp. Counsel, of counsel), for appellants.

A. D. Gash, for appellee.

CARTER, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the circuit court of Cook county granting the writ of mandamus on petition of James J. Miller, appellee, by which it was commanded that appellants place the name of said Miller upon the police pay roll of the city of Chicago as lieutenant of police, with the right to continue thereon and receive a salary the same as prior to the time of his removal. After various amendments to the pleadings the case was heard by the court, jury being waived, on the petition as amended, answer, and replication thereto, and the court on November 25, 1907, entered a judgment and order in favor of appellee and granted the writ as above stated. From this judgment an appeal was prayed to this court.

Appellants asked the trial court to hold the following proposition of law: ‘The provision of section 12 of the civil service act [Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, c. 24, § 457] providing that charges against an officer or employé in the classified service shall be investigated by or before the civil service commission, or some officer or board appointed by said commission to conduct said investigation, is not void as delegating a judicial power, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution of the state of Illinois.’ The trial judge made the following notation on this proposition: ‘Denied, because that part of section 12 which authorizes the commission to delegate judicial power to an officer or board is unconstitutional.’ The case is brough directly to this court because the constitutionality of this provision of the statute is questioned.

That part of the provision of section 12 of the city civil service act now in force in the city of Chicago involved in this question reads as follows: ‘No officer of employé in the classified civil service of any city who shall have been appointed under said rules and after said examination, shall be removed or discharged except for cause, upon written charges and after an opportunity to be heard in his own defense. Such charges shall be investigated by or before said civil service commission, or by or before some officer or board appointed by said commission, to conduct such investigation. The finding and decision of such commission or investigating officer or board, when approved by said commission, shall be certified to the appointing officer,and shall be forthwith enforced by such officer,’ etc. Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, p. 395, c. 24, § 457. This court has held in People v. Kipley, 171 ill. 44, 49 N. E. 229,41 L. R. A. 775, that the civil service act here in question is not unconstitutional, as delegating judicial power to the civil service commissioners; that the Legislature has the power to control municipalities created by it, and may direct how officers shall be elected or appointed by such cities and how they may be removed. This court, in the recent decision of City of Aurora v. Schoeberlein, 230 Ill. 496, 82 N. E. 860, held that section 12 in the act of 1903, providing for the appointment of police and fire commissioners in certain cities (Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, p. 390, c. 24, § 434 l), which gave such commissioners power to remove the officers in the department under them for cause, was not unconstitutional, as delegating judicial power to such board. The powers given the police and fire commissioners under that act are very similar to those given to the civil service commissioners under this act. The removal of an officer is not the exercise of a judicial power, as there is no such thing as title or property in a public office. Donahue v. County of Will, 100 Ill. 94;Stern v. People, 102 Ill. 540.

The charges against appellee were not heard, in the first instance, by the civil service commission, but by a trial board of the police department designated by the civil service commission for that purpose, in accordance with its rules. Appellee was charged with being absent from duty without permission of the general superintendent or his commanding officer. On the hearing before the trial board these charges were found to be true, and the following finding was made: ‘Upon investigation of within charges we find said James J. Miller guilty of being absent from duty without permission of the general superintendent of police or his commanding officer, and decide that he be discharged from his position of lieutenant of police,’ etc.-which finding was thereafter approved by the civil service commission. As we understand the ruling of the trial court on the proposition of law in question, it was held that the part of section 12 of said civil service act which authorizes the civil service commission to allow the investigation to be conducted before an officer or board appointed by it, rather than by the commission itself, was a delegation of judicial power, and therefore unconstitutional. If the civil service commission, in hearing such charges, would not exercise judicial functions, it is difficult to see how it delegates judicial functions to the board or officer designated to investigate the charges, when such board or officer exercises no greater power in the investigation than would the commission itself. Indeed, this trial board did not exercise as great a power as the commission, as it only had authority to hear the charges and...