People ex rel. Pack v. Supervisors of Presque Isle County

• Decision Date: 24 April 1877
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: The People on the relation of Albert Pack v. The Supervisors of Presque Isle County

36 Mich. 377

The People on the relation of Albert Pack v. The Supervisors of Presque Isle County

Supreme Court of Michigan

April 24, 1877

Submitted on Briefs April 12, 1877

Application for mandamus.

Mandamus denied with costs against the relator.

Victor C. Burnham and Atkinson & Atkinson, for relator.

Phillip O' Farrell and S. S. Olds, for respondents.

Campbell J. Cooley, Ch. J., and Graves, J., concurred. Marston, J. did not sit in this case.

OPINION

Campbell, J.:

A mandamus is sought for to compel provision to be made by taxation to pay certain warrants issued in June and November, 1874, and January, 1875, purporting to be dated at Crawford's Quarry, and to have been issued by order of the board of supervisors, signed by J. Burnham, chairman, and Frederick Denny Larke, clerk.

The answer, which is not controverted by the relator, denies that the county had any legal organization until after the act of 1875, which made adequate provision for it, and treated it as then unorganized; that in 1870 a single township, of Rogers, not embracing the whole county, was organized by the supervisors of Alpena, to which Presque Isle county was then attached. A statute was passed in 1871, providing for its separate organization, but creating no new townships. This statute provided for election of county officers during that spring, or at any future time, on ten days' notice, given by the clerk of Rogers, and fixed the county seat at Rogers City until lawfully removed. On the 29th of July, 1871, the board of supervisors of Alpena county took steps to organize another township, of Presque Isle, including a part of the township of Rogers, and some other territory, but leaving several surveyed townships, with inhabitants, outside of either of those towns so organized, and outside of any organized township.

In 1875 the legislature, treating Presque Isle county as still unorganized, divided it into townships, and made the other necessary arrangements to give it legal existence.

In 1874 Frederick Burnham and Leonard C. Crawford, as supervisors held a meeting at Crawford's Quarry (and not at Rogers City), and adjourned from the 13th to the 28th of February, when they passed a resolution declaring it expedient to remove the county seat from Rogers City to Crawford's Quarry, and for submitting the question of removal to a vote of the inhabitants of the several townships in the county on the 6th of April. The meeting of February 13th is averred to have been illegal, and without notice to the clerk, or his...