Rogers v. Board of Sup'rs of Union County

• Decision Date: 30 April 1917
• Docket Number: 19683
• Citation: 75 So. 123,114 Miss. 326
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: RODGERS ET AL. v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF UNION COUNTY

75 So. 123

114 Miss. 326

RODGERS ET AL. v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF UNION COUNTY

No. 19683

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 30, 1917

Division B

APPEAL from the chancery court of Union county, HON. A. J. MCINTYRE Chancellor.

Suit for injunction by J. L. S. Rodgers and others against the board of supervisors of Union county. From an order dismissing an injunction, plaintiffs appeal.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Case reversed and remanded.

C. Lee Crum, for appellants.

L. K Carlton, for appellee.

OPINION

ETHRIDGE, J.

This is an appeal from an order of the chancery court of Union county dissolving an injunction to prevent the issuance of three hundred thousand dollars worth of county bonds under chapter 173, Laws 1916.

During the year 1910, after the passage of chapter 149, Laws 1910 the board of supervisors of Union county created a road district under said chapter, embracing districts Nos. 1, 2 and 3 of union county, and issued bonds to the amount of fifty thousand which was expended upon the roads of said road district in widening and grading and filling low places with common earth. The total bond fund was expended in this work, and the commissioner had been discharged in said district, but said bonds and interest were outstanding and unpaid at the time of the order issuing the bonds sought to be enjoined in the present case. When the board published a notice to the voters of Union county of its purpose to issue bonds under chapter 173, Laws 1916, a protest signed by two hundred and twelve voters was filed protesting against the issuance of said road bonds, there being more than three thousand legal voters in Union county at the said time; consequently less than the number required to order an election petitioned for an election or made protest against the issuance of the bonds, and the board proceeded to order the issuance of three hundred thousand dollars road bonds of the county without ordering an election in the road district created under chapter 149, Laws 1910, during the year 1910. The bill for an injunction alleges that under the law the road district had a right to construct roads of stone, slag, chert, gravel, or sand and clay, or a combination of said materials or of other material of equity durability, and it is contended that under section 11 of chapter 149, that the board could not issue the new bonds without submitting the question to the electors of the district created in 1910 and obtaining a consent of the majority of such electors. The exhibits to the bill contain the orders of the board of supervisors, petitions, etc., constituting the proceedings before the board in each of the bond issues, and their answer was filed and a certificate from the chancery clerk showing the assessed value of property for the year 1916 in Union county and certain affidavits showing that there was no stone, chert, slag, gravel, or sand and clay roads constructed under the road district created in 1910, but that the roads were merely improved, widened, etc., by the use of natural earth without mixing in any proportion or according to any formula. In December, 1916, the board, in ordering notice of its intention to issue the bonds under chapter 173, recited that they would issue the bonds not to exceed ten per cent. of the assessed value of the taxable property of the county, including outstanding bonds. The notice given appears by an order of the board to have been irregular in some undisclosed particular, and new notice was ordered published of the board's intention to issue the bonds, and this newly published notice brought forth the protest of the two hundred and twelve qualified electors. Whereupon the board adjudged that the two hundred and twelve electors did not constitute the required percentage to order an election and proceeded to order the issuance of the three hundred thousand dollar bonds of the county, but the order of the board does not recite what the assessed value of the property of the county was, nor does it recite what the outstanding bonds of the county were. But in the record appears a certificate from the chancery clerk which shows that the assessed value of the taxable property of the county for the year 1916 was three million eighty-four thousand seven hundred and ten dollars, and that the bonded indebtedness of the county, including the three hundred thousand dollars, was three hundred sixty-five thousand...