Sarah Hutchinson v. City of Valdosta
| Decision Date | 24 February 1913 |
| Docket Number | No. 146,146 |
| Parties | SARAH M. HUTCHINSON, Appt., v. CITY OF VALDOSTA, Samuel M. Varnedoe, Recorder, and Calvin Dampier, Marshal |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mrs. Sarah M. Hutchinson, in propria persona, and Mr. Charles S. Morgan for appellant.
No appearance for appellees.
Bill in equity brought by appellant to restrain appellees from proceeding against her for the alleged violation of an ordinance of the City of Valdosta.
The facts as alleged are these:
The City of Valdosta is a municipal corporation under the laws of Georgia, and the appellees, Varnedoe and Dampier, are respectively the recorder of the mayor's court of the city and marshal. Appellant owns and resides with her husband and children on a lot of land containing about 1 acre, more or less, situated near three quarters of a mile from the main business part of the city. The lot is elevated and dry, with good natural surface drainage, clean and clear of garbage or anything which would create a nuisance, free from miasmatic conditions, and is healthy, with a wide street on three sides and a railroad right-of-way and almost open country in the rear. She has lived on the lot for more than twenty years.
The city is an inland town, built and standing upon a high pine ridge about 75 miles from the Gulf of Mexico 'and not 100 miles from the Atlantic ocean,' with no swamp near. The city has a population of not exceeding five or six thousand white inhabitants and covers an area 2 miles in extent. It was incorporated by an act of the legislature of Georgia on the 21st of November, 1901, under the name and style of the City of Valdosta, and under that name may sue and be sued, through its mayor and council, and enact such rules and regulations for the transaction of its business and for the welfare and proper government thereof as said mayor and council may deem best, not inconsistent with the laws of Georgia and of the United States.
On the 1st of September, 1909, the city passed an ordinance requiring persons and property owners residing upon any street along which sewer mains have been laid, within thirty days after the passage of the ordinance, to install water closets in their houses, and connect the same with the main sewer pipe, and to provide the closets with water, so that they may be ready for use in the ordinary and usual way, and such persons shall not be permitted to use or keep on their premises a surface closet.
A house without a closet, situated as stated above, is, by the passage of the ordinance, condemned as a menace to the public health, and the owner of the premises who does not comply with the ordinance is subject to a fine of not exceeding $200, or to labor on the streets or public works, or to be confined in the guardhouse of the city for not exceeding ninety days.
Appellant's house is a wooden building, with rooms only sufficient for the immediate use of herself and family, and to comply with the ordinance she would be compelled to build an addition to the house, which, with connection to the sewer and payment for the necessary water, would cost her a considerable sum of money.
The personal appellees are threatening to arrest her for the purpose of fine and imprisonment or labor on the streets for not complying with the ordinance, and to avoid arrest she has at several times left her home and family, to her great inconvenience, mortification, and wounded feelings.
That part of the city where her residence is situated is thinly settled, and there is no necessity on account of health or sanitary conditions of the city or any part thereof to force her, against her wish, to connect a water-closet in her house by a pipe to the main sewer, and would subject her and her family to the noxious gases, odors, and noisome smells from the sewer, thereby endangering her health and impairing her comfort and that of her family, and thereby creating a nuisance.
She had no notice nor opportunity to be heard before the commencement of proceedings to force her before the recorder to answer to the charge of violating the ordinance. For that reason...
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