State ex rel. Mount v. Bourn

• Decision Date: 30 April 1882
• Parties: THE STATE ex rel. MOUNT v. BOURN et al., Appellants.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

75 Mo. 473

THE STATE ex rel. MOUNT

v.BOURN et al., Appellants.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

April Term, 1882.

Appeal from Scotland Circuit Court.--HON. J. C. ANDERSON, Judge.

REVERSED.

This was a proceeding by mandamus against Benjamin F. Bourn, Ellis Sparks and Riley Gale, justices of the county court of Scotland county, to compel them to issue the relator a warrant on the county revenue fund for $17.50 due relator for labor performed by him as road overseer and for sign-boards and materials furnished to his district. The county court had allowed the claim and ordered the clerk to issue to relator a script on his district for the amount. This relator refused to receive, and the county court refused to issue a warrant on the county treasury. Other facts appear in the opinion.

Cramer & Myers for appellants.

SHERWOOD, C. J.

The return of the county court justices, which the demurrer thereto admits to be true, sets forth that they, “as justices of the county court, made an order of record setting apart a certain portion of the county revenue for the purpose of repairing roads, purchasing material and tools for district No. 4, township 65, range 12, Scotland county, and that the amount so set apart was ample and sufficient for the purpose; that the court in its order had fixed the price of labor in said district and the amount of tax to be collected.”

1. ROAD EXPENDITURES.

This return, we think, was good and sufficient and should have been thus held. And if, as the county justices say in their return, the relator exceeded the amount of said labor and taxes so provided by the county court, it was without any authority. It belongs to the county court, and the county court alone, to say, within the limits the statute prescribes, the number of days each person liable to work on public roads shall work, and the amount of road tax to be levied. Sess. Acts 1877, pp. 397, 398, §§ 16, 17, 20. If the road overseer exceeds, in his expenditures on the roads in his district, the amount provided by the county court, it is a matter of his own concern. To permit him to exceed the amount provided by the county court for him to expend, would be to substitute his judgment for that of the county court and to nullify the statute. This is a thing we will not sanction. In the case of Ewell v. Virgil Township, 65 Mo. 657, we ruled a similar point in the same way.

2. ______: overseer's per diem.

If the claim of relator had been for his per diem as road overseer, and the taxes in his...