People v. Platt

• Decision Date: 26 November 1889
• Citation: 117 N.Y. 159,22 N.E. 937
• Parties: PEOPLE v. PLATT.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

117 N.Y. 159

22 N.E. 937

PEOPLE

v.PLATT.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 26, 1889.

Appeal from supreme court, general term, third department.

Action in the nature of quo warranto by the people of the state of New York, to oust Thomas C. Platt from the office of quarantine commissioner. A judgment of ouster was affirmed on appeal to the general term of the supreme court, and defendant appeals.

Wm. W. McFarland, for appellant.

E. Countryman, for respondnet.

DANFORTH, J.

The act of April 29, 1863, establishing a quarantine, and, among other things, defining the qualifications of certain officers who should execute the powers and perform the duties created by it, (Laws 1863, c. 358,) made it the duty of the governor to appoint ‘three persons, citizens of this state, who should be residents of the ‘Metropolitan District,” as commissioners of quarantine, who should hold their offices for three years, and until their successors were appointed and qualified; and required him every three years thereafter, and as often as vacancies should occur by reason, among other things, of ‘removal from the said district,’ to appoint persons of like qualifications to fill the places thus made vacant, (section 54, Id.) Under this act commissioners were from time to time appointed, and on the 29th of January, 1880, a vacancy existing, the defendant, Thomas C. Platt, was appointed quarantine commissioner. He entered upon the duties of his office, and was in the exercise of its functions when this action was instituted for his removal, upon the ground that he was not at the time of his appointment a resident of the metropolitan police district, or of any territory included therein, but was a resident of the county of Tioga, which at no time was or had been part of said district.

Upon trial of the issues formed in the action the jury found for the plaintiff, and, in answer to a specific question submitted to them, said that ‘the defendant did not have a legal residence and domicile at the time in question in the metropolitan police district;’ thus sustaining, as the plaintiff claims, the ground upon which the action was brought. On the other hand the defendant contends that his actual residence at the time of his appointment was in the city of New York, a place within the specified district; that it continued to be there during his whole incumbency; and that this was enough, although his domicile remained in Tioga county, and he there exercised all the rights which pertained to it. The appeal, therefore, presents a single question, and that is to be answered by ascertaining the true construction of the statute supra.

Before going to that, it will be well to rehearse the facts on which the verdict turned. From the allegations in the answer or the defendant's own testimony, it appeared that he ‘was born in the village of Owego and county of Tioga, and always resided there, down to 1878. He sold his family residence in Owego in the spring of 1878, and has never kept house any where since. After selling his house, he and his wife boarded at a hotel in Owego until September, 1879. He then changed his boarding-house to the city of New York, but retained a room in the Owego Hotel, hiring it by the month, until September, 1882, occupying it on occasional visits during that period. After going to New York, he and his wife occupied rooms in a boarding-house until the fall of 1880, when they changed their quarters to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and have remained there, except during the hot season of each year, ever since. It was while they were boarding at the corner of Fifth avenue and Forty-First street, in the city of New York, that the defendant received the appointment of commissioner of quarantine. He has been, since April, 1879, secretary or president of an express company in New York, and during the same period...