State v. Marion County Com'rs

• Decision Date: 04 March 1891
• Parties: STATE ex rel. VEREEN v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF MARION COUNTY.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

8 So. 749

27 Fla. 438

STATE ex rel. VEREEN v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF MARION COUNTY.

Florida Supreme Court

March 4, 1891

Mandamus.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

A peremptory writ of mandamus will be refused when it is evident that it would be without beneficial results, and fruitless to the relator.

COUNSEL Miller & Spencer and D. S. Walker, Jr., for relator.

Bullock & Burford, for respondent.

OPINION

MABRY J.

The relator filed in this court, on the 9th day of July, 1888, a petition for an alternative writ of mandamus against the board of county commissioners of Marion county, Fla commanding them to consider the application of said relator filed before said board, for a permit to sell liquors, wines and beer in district No. 1, in Marion county, Fla., and to grant to relator a permit authorizing him to obtain a license to sell liquors, wines, and beer in said district from the date of said permit until the 1st day of October, 1888. Relator avers in his petition for said alternative writ that in the months of July and August, 1887 he, at great expense and considerable loss of time, procured a majority of the registered voters of district No. 1, in Marion county, Fla., as shown by the registration list on file in the clerk's office in said county, to sign an application to the board of county commissioners of said county to grant him a permit to sell liquors, wines, and beer from the 1st day of October, 1887, until the 1st day of October, 1888; that said application, with the names and marks attached thereto, was published for two weeks in a newspaper published in said county, before the meeting of said board in September, 1887, and that relator made the affidavit required by the statute in reference to procuring said names; that relator presented his said application to the said board of county commissioners at a regular meeting on the first Monday in September, 1887, and requested that a permit be granted him to sell liquors, wines, and beer from the first Monday in October, 1887, until the first Monday in October, 1888; that said board did, under various pretexts, delay the hearing of his said application, and finally at said meeting refused to consider the same, alleging as an excuse for their wrongful refusal and failure to act that one-fourth of the registered voters of Marion county had petitioned said board to call an election to decide whether the sale of intoxicating liquors, wines, or beer should be prohibited in said county, and that, in accordance with said petition, said board had called an election to decide whether liquors, wines, or beer should be sold in said county; that said excuses were false, and that in fact and in truth one-fourth of the registered voters of Marion county had not petitioned said board to call such election, and that, if said board had called said election, the same was illegally called, as no petition of one-fourth of the registered voters of Marion county had...