Sargent v. Clark

• Decision Date: 20 August 1910
• Citation: 77 A. 337,83 Vt. 523
• Parties: SARGENT et al. v. CLARK et al.
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

77 A. 337

83 Vt. 523

SARGENT et al.

v. CLARK et al.

Supreme Court of Vermont. General Term.

Aug. 20, 1910.

Appeal in Chancery, Rutland County; Zed S. Stanton, Chancellor.

Suit by S. K. Sargent and others against Charles K. Clark and others. Decree for respondents, and complainants appeal. Reversed and remanded.

Argued before ROWELL, C. J., and MUNSON, WATSON, HASELTON, and POWERS, JJ.

Stickney, Sargent & Skeels, for orators.

Lawrence, Lawrence & Stafford and T. W. Maloney, for defendants.

ROWELL, C. J. The question is whether a town can legally vote money to pay expenses incurred by some of its inhabitants in opposing before the Legislature the passage of a bill favored by other of its inhabitants to constitute a new town of part of its territory and to apportion its assets and liabilities between them.

This depends upon whether the statute authorizes it. If it does, it must be in P. S. 3530, which provides that "a town shall vote such sums of money as it deems necessary for the support of schools in the town school district, for laying out and repairing highways, for the prosecution and defence of the common rights and interests of the inhabitants, and for other incidental town expenses." But, before considering whether this authorizes it or not, it is well to see in a general way what towns are, and what their purpose and functions. They are creatures of the Legislature, and are constituted for governmental purposes, and their rights and franchises never can become vested rights as against the state, which may exercise over them exclusive control, and may enlarge, restrict, and even destroy their corporate existence, as the public good requires. And such action on the part of the state neither defeats vested rights nor impairs contract obligations within the meaning of the Constitution. The state also has the control and disposition, to some extent certainly, of the property of towns held for municipal and corporate purposes, but not of property held for private purposes, as in trust for purposes other than municipal and corporate. Montpelier v. East Montpelier, 29 Vt 12, 67 Am. Dec. 748. The general disposition of courts in this country has been, Judge Cooley says—and the cases bear him out—to confine municipalities within the limits that a strict construction of the grants of power in their charters will assign to them, thus applying substantially the same rule that is applied to the charters of private corporations; the reasonable presumption being that the state has granted in clear and unmistakable terms all it intended to grant at all. Cooley, Const. Lim. (6th Ed.) 231. He further says that the powers conferred upon towns must be construed with reference to the object of their creation, namely, as agencies of the state in local government, for the state can create them for no other purpose, as it can confer powers of govern- ment to no other end without at once coming in conflict with the constitutional maxim that legislative powers cannot be delegated, or with the constitutional provision designed to confine all the agencies of government to the exercise of their proper functions; and that whenever a town attempts to exercise powers not within the proper province of local self-government, whether the right to do so is claimed under express legislative grant or by implication from the charter, the act must be considered as altogether ultra vires and therefore void. Cooley, Const. Lim. (6th Ed.) 260.

These things being so, it is manifest that the rights and interests meant by our statute are the rights and interests of...