Sargent v. Union School-Dist.

• Decision Date: 22 February 1886
• Parties: SARGENT v. UNION SCHOOL-DIST., IN CONCORD, and another.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

2 A. 641

63 N.H. 528

SARGENT

v. UNION SCHOOL-DIST., IN CONCORD, and another.

SUPREME COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Filed February 22, 1886.

Bill in equity.

The material allegations of the bill are that the plaintiff is a resident and tax-payer in said district; that, by virtue of chapter 43, Laws 1885, said district will cease to have a corporate existence after March 1, 1886, and the other defendants will cease to be the board of education in said district; that the money belonging to said district will then become the money of the city of Concord, as a town-district incorporated by said chapter 43; that $1,000 of the money now belonging to said district the said board of education intend and threaten to expend, after said March 1st, for the pretended school purposes of said union district. The prayer is for an injunction to restrain the defendants from diverting said money, as threatened. The facts being admitted, the opinion of the court was given as on a demurrer to the bill.

M. W. Tappan, for plaintiff.

Wm. M. Chase and D. B. Donovan, for defendants.

DOE, C. J. "The division of towns into school-districts heretofore existing is hereby abolished, and each town shall hereafter constitute a single district for school purposes; provided, however, that districts organized under special acts of the legislature may retain their present organization." Laws 1885, c. 43, § 1. In the title of chapter 89 of the same Laws, districts described in chapter 43 as "organized under special acts" are called "special school-districts." Both acts will take effect and be in force from and after March 1, 1886. Special districts will retain their present organization, and continue to exercise their corporate powers, and perform their educational duties. But on the first day of March all other districts, being parts of towns or cities, will cease to exist for general purposes, and will be united in town-districts. In these new town-districts there will be no superintending or prudential committees; but the duties heretofore performed by such committees will be performed by a school board of three persons, chosen by ballot at the annual school meeting of the town-district. In the Revision of the Statutes in 1867, a new section was introduced in the chapter on high schools, providing that all statutes applying to particular places or districts, relating to schools, or the committees or officers thereof, and then in force, should remain in force. Gen. St. c. 82, §12; Gen. Laws, c. 90, § 16.

Under chapter 43, Laws 1885, § 1, the question arises, what districts were intended to be exempted from involuntary extinction? They are described as "districts organized under special acts of the legislature." Statutes "applying to particular places or districts" are generally called "Special Acts." A corporation organized under a charter passed for no other purpose than its creation is organized under a special act, distinguished from the general law authorizing corporate organization. Gen. Laws, c. 152. The distinction between general and special legislation being indicated by the terms "organized under special acts," understood in their technical and ordinary legal sense, that distinction is to betaken as the test of the abolition of a school-district, unless competent evidence shows that some other test was intended by the legislature, and that the descriptive terms are to be understood in some other sense than that in which they are commonly used in the law. In chapter 43 there is evidence that the proviso of section 1, saving special districts, was inserted after the original bill was drawn, without such a clerical alteration of the rest of the bill as would make all its parts literally accurate after their meaning was modified by the proviso. But the evident verbal inaccuracy raises no difficulty of interpretation. Each part means what the whole act, taken together, shows the legislature understood it meant. The effect of the proviso is to be kept in view in reading the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth sections, as well as the first. Section 2, providing for an equalization of school-house and other property by the assessment and remission of a tax, in terms requires the tax to be assessed "upon the whole town," when the meaning is that it shall be assessed upon the whole town-district, composed of abolished districts, and not upon a special district that retains its present organization. Section 5 requires the selectmen to call "the first meeting of such district so composed of the whole town," meaning the town-district composed of abolished districts only. Section 6 requires "the said school board of each town" (meaning town-district) to provide schools at such places and times "as shall give all the scholars of the town (meaning town-district) as nearly equal advantages as may be practicable."

It is the duty of the court to ascertain, from legal proof, the intention of the legislature, whose purpose, plainly manifested by the entire act, cannot be thwarted by a literal construction of particular passages. If it is found, upon competent evidence, that the proviso or any other clause, taken in its strict literal sense, would not express, but would defeat, the legislative will, it is to be construed with such liberality as will execute the proved design of the law-making power. As other clauses may be misunderstood if the proviso is disregarded, so the proviso, read without due consideration of subsequent sections, and the existing conditions of law and fact upon which it is to operate, may lead to error.

A clause of the second section provides for an apportionment of the property and debts of union districts belonging to different towns. Rumney v. Smart, 18 N. H. 268, is a case that arose upon a special act, uniting district No. 5, in Rumney, and No. 7, in Wentworth. In School-district v. Pillsbury, 58 N. H. 423, parts of Bow and Concord had been united in one district under a general law. No reason appears in the acts of 1885 for employing the technical distinction between general and special legislation as the test in extinguishing all such districts as that in Bow and Concord, and allowing all such as that in Rumney and Wentworth to survive; and that test would produce results that were apparently not intended by the legislature. As the school board of the town-district is to be elected, not by the town as a town, nor by the surviving districts, but by the new town-district taking the place of those that are abolished, and as the powers and duties of this board will not extend to the supervision of the schools and teachers of old surviving districts, the town as a town, and not as a school-district, would need to provide a superintending committee for a surviving district not having a superintending committee or board of education of its own. Many special acts have been passed for the organization of subordinate districts with no such committees or boards of their own. The proviso, taken in the literal and technical sense that would save the districts organized under such acts, would continue the operation of complex machinery which it was one of the chief objects of the legislature to stop, and would exclude much of the unity and simplicity of organization and action which they particularly desired to introduce. A result so inconsistent with the general tenor and purpose of the law is evidence on the question of interpretation. The obvious general purpose of unity and simplicity tends to show that the intention was to abolish every subordinate district not authorized by the law under which it is now organized to have special officers of its own, invested with full power of surpervising its schools and teachers....