People ex rel. Stuckart v. Snow

• Decision Date: 21 June 1917
• Docket Number: No. 11179.,11179.
• Citation: 279 Ill. 289,116 N.E. 670
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. STUCKART, County Collector, v. SNOW.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

279 Ill. 289

116 N.E. 670

PEOPLE ex rel. STUCKART, County Collector,

v.SNOW.

No. 11179.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 21, 1917.

Appeal from Cook County Court; John H. Williams, Judge.

Action by the People, on the relation of Stuckart, County Collector, against Taylor A. Snow. From an adverse judgment, defendant appeals. Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.

Enoch J. Price, of Chicago, for appellant.

Maclay Hoyne, State's Atty., of Chicago (Samuel A. Ettelson, Corp. Counsel, Charles Center Case, Jr., Felsenthal & Wilson, William F. Struckmann, Edmund D. Adcock, Ross C. Hall, Walter E. Beebe, Leon Hornstein, and Joseph F. Grossman, all of Chicago, of counsel), for appellee.

CARTER, C. J.

Taylor A. Snow prosecutes this appeal from an order and judgment of sale against his property, rendered in the county court of Cook county for delinquent taxes for the year 1915. All the objections raised in appellant's brief, except with reference to the publication of the appropriation ordinance in the Chicago Evening Post, were raised in People v. Day, 277 Ill. 543, 115 N. E. 732,People v. Huey, 277 Ill. 561, 115 N. E. 739,People v. Reinhold, 277 Ill. 565, 115 N. E. 745, and People v. Sandberg Co., 277 Ill. 567, 115 N. E. 741. The decisions in those cases are necessarily controlling here, and the questions therein raised need no further discussion.

Paragraph 64 of chapter 24 of the Illinois statutes provides among other things:

‘All ordinances of cities and villages * * * making any appropriation, shall, within one month after they are passed, be published at least once in a newspaper published in the city or village, or, if no such newspaper is published therein, by posting copies of the same in three public places in the city or village; and no such ordinance shall take effect until ten days after it is so published.’ Hurd's Stat. 1916, p. 310.

The eleventh paragraph of section 1 of chapter 131 of the Illinois statutes provides:

‘The time within which any act provided by law is to be done shall be computed by excluding the first day and including the last, unless the last day is Sunday, and then it also shall be excluded.’ Hurd's Stat. 1916, p. 2576.

The time for which any notice is to be given is computed in the same manner by section 6 of chapter 100 of the statutes. Hurd's Stat. 1916, p. 1802. This court has held that where a statute provides that at least ten days' notice shall be given, in computing the time the first day is to be excluded and the last day included in the computation. Gordon v. People, 154 Ill. 664, 39 N. E. 560;Brown v. City of Chicago, 117 Ill. 21, 7 N. E. 108. The same rule of computation has also been applied in computing the last day for service to a given term of court. Bowman v. Wood, 41 Ill. 203;Harper v. Ely, 56 Ill. 179. See, to the same effect, Roan v. Rohrer, 72 Ill. 582, and Pugh v. Reat, 107 Ill. 440. For authorities in other jurisdictions adopting the same rule of computation, see note to Halbert v. San Saba Springs Land Ass'n, 49 L. R. A. 193.

Counsel for appellant contends that all the taxes levied for the city of Chicago for 1915 are illegal for the reason that the appropriation ordinance passed by said city and published on January 29, 1915, did not become effective, as the only tax levy ordinance passed by said city was passed February 8, 1915; that therefore ten days had not intervened, as required by statute, before such ordinance could be enforced. Under the decisions already cited as to the rule to be adopted in computing time the ordinance in question became in full force and effect on February 8, 1915, hence this objection of counsel must be overruled. This in no way conflicts with the holding of this court in People v. Florville, 207 Ill. 79, 69 N. E. 623, cited and relied on by counsel for appellant.

Counsel further insists that the publication of said ordinance on January 29th was insufficient; that it was not printed in all the copies of the Post issued on that day or in the main edition, but only in a smaller number of copies delivered and sold at certain news stands, whereas, under the law, the said ordinance should have been printed in all the copies of the newspaper published on said publication day. The evidence in the record shows that on January 29th the Chicago Evening Post was a daily newspaper and was published on six different days each week in seven editions daily-that is, the noon edition at 9:45 a. m., the afternoon edition at 11:20 a. m., the home edition at about 1:15 p. m., the market edition at 2:30, and three sporting editions at about 3, 4, and 5 p. m., respectively. The city of Chicago on January 5, 1915, entered into a contract with the Chicago Evening Post Company as to the official printing for the year 1915. The contract provided that said company should print all matters and things required by law or any city ordinance to be printed, in at least one edition of the Chicago Evening Post. All copies of that paper for January 29, 1915, bore a single number (7651), which refers to the number of days that the paper had been issued, each number denoting an issue. Articles on the editorial page and other general news are practically the same in all editions on a given day and are printed from the same type, but each edition has its distinctive feature. The noon edition of that date carried on its date column the words ‘Noon Edition,’ and at the top of the first page, to the right of the title, the words ‘Official Newspaper of the City of Chicago.’ It appears that each of said editions of the paper has its own list of subscribers, and the places where the copies are delivered are distinct and separate and the papers are kept distinct and separate in the office of the paper. It further appears that said appropriation ordinance appeared only in the noon edition of...