Rice v. Shay

• Decision Date: 28 April 1880
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: RICE v. SHAY.

5 N.W. 435

43 Mich. 380

RICE v. SHAY.

Supreme Court of Michigan

April 28, 1880

The legislature may, in organizing a county, delegate the authority to locate the county seat to commissioners.

Mandamus.

David A. Rice, and M.V. Montgomery, for relator.

Sawyer & Bishop, Fallass & McIntyre, and Hughes, O'Brien &amp Smiley, for respondent.

GRAVES, J.

The legislature in 1869 passed an act, which took effect March 30th, to organize the county of Wexford, (3 Session Laws 1869, p. 1085, act 368,) and by the ninth section provided for locating the county seat. The provision reads as follows:

"Section 9. The county seat of said county shall be and is hereby located in township 24 north, of range 12 west, at or near what is called Manistee bridge; and Henry J. Devoe, Isaac W. Davis and E.C. Dayhuff are hereby appointed commissioners to locate the same. If said commissioners or any two of them shall fail to locate said county seat within one year from June next, then the board of supervisors and county clerk of said county shall locate the same."

May 17 1869, the said commissioners made the location in accordance with the statute, and there has been no change whatever so far as the record shows. The relator is the prosecuting attorney, and the respondent county treasurer, and the latter keeps his office at his residence in the village of Haring some 25 miles from the point designated, and refuses to keep his office thereat.

The application of relator is for a mandamus to compel him to do so. He sets up, by way of cause against the application, that the public opinion of the county has always been divided upon whether the county seat was actually established in point of law at the place designated, and that there has never been any general acquiescence; that the county business has been scattered and not concentrated there, and that the place has been more ignored as the county seat than respected that five meetings of the board of supervisors have been held there, but, as he is informed and believes, they have established county jails at two points several miles therefrom, and that the sessions of the circuit court are held at two places considerably removed. But the main objection raised is that the legislature had no power to invest commissioners with authority to select the immediate spot for the county seat. If the place was designated according to law the officials of the county and the people...