State Ex Rel v. Griffin

• Decision Date: 21 November 1899
• Citation: 125 N.C. 332,34 S.E. 429
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE ex rel. GATTIS et al. v. GRIFFIN et al.

34 S.E. 429

125 N.C. 332

STATE ex rel.

GATTIS et al.

v.GRIFFIN et al.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Nov. 21, 1899.

PUBLIC OFFICE—PROPERTY RIGHT.

Persons elected to the office of the board of education, a public corporation, have during their term a property right therein, to the extent that, the office not being abolished, but the act establishing it being merely amended, they cannot be deprived thereof.

Clark, J., dissenting.

Appeal from superior court, Chatham county; Brown, Judge.

Quo warranto by the state, on relation of F. N. Gattis and others, against J. M. Griffin and others. Judgment for defendants. Plaintiffs appeal. Reversed.

J. A. Giles, for appellants.

H. A. London and Womack & Hayes, for appellees.

FAIRCLOTH, C. J. The facts in this case present the same question as that in State v. Hancock (at this term) 34 S. E. 516, and this must be governed by the same principle announced in that ease. The same legislative acts are relied upon by the defendants. We were favored with an argument to the effect that the plaintiffs have no property in the office of the board of education, because the board is a public corporation, and therefore under the control of the legislature; and Mills v. Williams, 33 N. C. 558, was cited in its support. In that case the facts were that the legislature, in 1846, established a new county by the name of Polk. The county officers were elected, and entered on the duties of their respective offices, including the sheriff. Before their terms expired, the legislature repealed the act establishing the county, and, after the repealing act, the sheriff arrested the plaintiff under process, and was sued for an assault; the sheriff insisting that the repeal was unconstitutional, and that his office still continued. The court held that the county was a corporation established by the legislature for the benefit of the public, and that there was no feature of a contract in it, as there is in private corporations chartered by the legislature. It follows, as a sequence, that, when the county was destroyed or abolished by the repealing act, all the county offices went with it, as they were merely incidental provisions for the public welfare. This is the doctrine of all the eases from Hoke v. Henderson, 15 N. C. 1, to the present time; i. e. when the office is abolished, out and out, the officer is left without an official habitation, but when the office is continued, with the same duties, and even some additional duties, although under a different name of the office, the original owner of the office is entitled to it as his property. In the case before us, the act establishing the office is not repealed, but only amended, and therein the analogy fails. Reversed.

CLARK, J., dissents, for reasons given in the dissenting opinions in State v. Owen, 34 S. E. 424, and State v. Beddingfield, Id. 412, at this term. The county board of education of Chatham county was a quasi corporation, or municipal corporation, and the matter of its management and control was a matter fully within the powers of the legislature, by virtue of the necessities arising from the exercise of sovereignty, by a long line of decisions in this state, and lastly by the express provisions of the constitution. Article 7, § 14, and article 8, § 1. Faircloth, C. J., in Barnhill v. Thompson, 122 N. C. 493, 29 S. E. 720, in describing what is a public office, and applying his description to the board of education of Bladen county, said that it was a delegation of the sovereign power to an individual for the public good, which thereby distinguished it from a mere employment or contract. In Harriss v. Wright, 121 N. C. 179, 28 S. E. 270, the chief justice, in enumerating the powers which the general...