State Ex Rel. Gulf Life Ins. Co. v. City of Live Oak

• Decision Date: 09 November 1936
• Citation: 170 So. 608,126 Fla. 132
• Parties: STATE ex rel. GULF LIFE INS. CO. v. CITY OF LIVE OAK.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

170 So. 608

126 Fla. 132

STATE ex rel. GULF LIFE INS. CO. v. CITY OF LIVE OAK.

Florida Supreme Court

November 9, 1936

En Banc.

Original mandamus proceeding by the State, on the relation of the Gulf Life Insurance Company, against the City of Live Oak municipal corporation.

Alternative writ of mandamus quashed with leave to amend.

COUNSELLoftin, Stokes & Calkins and Scott M. Loftin all of Miami, and Robert H. Anderson and Harold B. Wahl, both of Jacksonville, for relator.

Alfred T. Airth, of Live Oak, for respondent.

OPINION

DAVIS Justice.

Mandamus proceedings have been instituted against the respondent, City of Live Oak, a municipal corporation.The command of the alternative writ is that the City of Live Oak qua a municipal corporation, through its properly authorized (but unnamed) officials, representatives, clerks, attorneys agents, and servants, forthwith do levy a tax on all of the taxable property within the municipality sufficient to pay relator's bonds and coupons on which the respondent municipality is obligor, exclusively for the purpose of paying such obligations, and to assess the taxable property pursuant to such levy and thereupon to collect and receive the taxes thereupon in accordance with such levy and assessment from the persons liable therefor, and to pay the relator the amounts due on his bonds and interest in accordance with the tenor of said bonds and coupons, all as provided and required by law, and agreed to be done and performed, by the municipality obligor at the time of its issuing same.

A motion to quash the alternative writ has been made on the ground that, inasmuch as only the City of Live Oak, as a municipality, has been made partyrespondent to said alternative writ, therefore the writ is fatally defective because it does not run to the mayor, the several members of the city council, the city clerk, city tax assessor, city tax collector, and city treasurer, each of whom is charged with some official duty to perform under the law in order to carry out the mandate of said alternative writ should it be made peremptory.It is the foregoing ground that we shall discuss in detail in this opinion because the matter of law involved therein has never before been pointedly presented and required to be decided in this state.

The proposition involved in the objection just stated, while never before decided in this state, is reasonably free from difficulty in its solution.The holder of municipal bonds takes them under a legal promise, secured by statutory obligation, that the municipality issuing them will exert its corporate powers under the law to see that the things it has agreed to do in order to provide payment at maturity are carried out in due course and in accordance with the legislative enactment under which the bonds issued.Whatever process binds the public corporation binds its officers who are privy to its duties and affairs.Little reason is perceived, therefore, why a writ of mandamus to coerce the raising of a special tax fund to pay a municipal corporation's obligations that a mandatory statute requires to be discharged through the exercise of its obligatory municipal taxing powers may not run against the municipal corporation itself without reference to its particular officials in office for the time being, the process becoming binding upon the respondent's officials because it is binding upon the principal.Indeed, many respectable authorities so hold, as will be seen by reference to the following: Leavenworth County Board of Com'rs v. Sellew,99 U.S. 624, 25 L.Ed. 333;Murphy v. Utter,186 U.S. 95, 22 S.Ct. 776, 46 L.Ed. 1070;Wilson v. United States,221 U.S. 361, 31 S.Ct. 538, 55 L.Ed. 771, Ann.Cas.1912D, 558;State ex rel. Bauman v. Judge of Civil Dist. Court,38 La.Ann. 43, 58 Am.Rep. 158;Norwalk & S.N. Electric Light Co. v. Common Council,71 Conn. 381, 42 A. 82.

A command in mandamus addressed to a municipal corporation is in effect a command to those who...