Scammon v. the City of Chicago.

• Decision Date: 30 April 1866
• Citation: 42 Ill. 192,1866 WL 4665
• Parties: J. YOUNG SCAMMONv.THE CITY OF CHICAGO.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

42 Ill. 192

1866 WL 4665 (Ill.)

J. YOUNG SCAMMON

v.THE CITY OF CHICAGO.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

April Term, 1866.

APPEAL from the Superior Court of Chicago; the Hon. JOHN M. WILSON, Chief Justice, presiding.

The opinion of the court contains a sufficient statement of the case. Mr. THOMAS HOYNE, for the appellant.

Mr. S. A. IRVIN, counsel to the corporation, for the appellee.

Mr. JUSTICE LAWRENCE delivered the opinion of the Court:

On the 15th of May, 1865, the common council of the city of Chicago passed an ordinance directing a certain part of Michigan avenue to be re-graveled, and that the real estate deemed benefited thereby, be assessed to pay the expense of the work, estimated at $16,200.00. An assessment roll was duly made and returned by the commissioners of the board of public works, showing the amount assessed by them against the respective pieces of property deemed to be benefited, and, a part of the owners having failed to pay, on the 5th of February, 1866, the city collector filed his report in the Superior Court, asking judgment against the delinquent lots for the amounts respectively assessed against them. Exceptions were filed to the report, which were overruled, and judgment was pronounced against the lots, from which judgment this appeal was prosecuted. We will consider the objections in the order they are presented by the argument of counsel for appellant.

It is first insisted, that the warrant issued to the city collector was not signed by the comptroller. The charter requires that warrants of this character shall be signed by the mayor, comptroller and city clerk. The signatures of all these officers were affixed to the warrant in question, but at the left of the comptroller's name was printed the word “countersigned.” The use of this term did not vitiate the signature of the comptroller, which was in fact “affixed,” and this was all that the law required. The mayor being the principal officer, the comptroller may have considered himself as “countersigning,” in reference to the signature of his official superior, but the prefix did not remove his name from the warrant nor render it any the less his signature. The objection rests upon a verbal subtlety of the most shadowy character, and is without merit.

It is next insisted that the charter confers no authority to make an assessment on private property for the purpose of regraveling a street. It is admitted that this may be done for graveling, but it is said not for re-graveling. Whether a distinction of this kind could have been taken under the charter of 1863 it is not necessary to inquire. It is clear that it cannot, under the amendments of 1865. By the first section of the act of 1865 these assessments are authorized, not only for graveling, but for repairing streets. It is for the city council to determine in what mode the reparations shall be made, and if they decide that a street, which has once been graveled, should be repaired by re-graveling, they are simply exercising a power expressly granted to them by the charter. That regraveling a street, which has once been graveled, but has been injured by wear and the elements, is repairing it, in the strictest sense of that word, would seem to be a question about which there could hardly be a difference of opinion.

It is next objected that the assessment roll returned to the common council by the commissioners, and confirmed by that body, did not show a valuation of the respective pieces of property assessed. The amendment to the charter of 1865, already referred to, and which was intended to conform the action of the city in reference to these improvements to the decision of this court at a former term, in the case of the City of Chicago v. Larned, requires the assessment to be made upon the real estate benefited, in proportion, as...