State v. Mayor

• Decision Date: 13 November 1899
• Parties: STATE (CHRISTIE et al., Prosecutors) v. MAYOR, ETC., OF CITY OF BAYONNE et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

44 A. 887

64 N.J.L. 191

STATE (CHRISTIE et al., Prosecutors)

v. MAYOR, ETC., OF CITY OF BAYONNE et al.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Nov. 13, 1899.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari by the state, on the prosecution of Alexander Christie and others, against the mayor and council of the city of Bayonne and Patrick Flanigan, president of the council, to test legality of an ordinance. Ordinance set aside.

Argued June term, 1899, before COLLINS and DIXON, JJ.

Van Buskirk & Parker, for prosecutors.

James Benny, for defendants.

DIXON, J. An act of the legislature approved March 15, 1892 (1 Gen. St. p. 500), declares that in any city of the second class, which, at the municipal election held next after the passage of the act, adopts its provisions, there shall be elected a president of the city council, who shall receive an annual salary equal to one-half the salary of the mayor of the city. At the then next municipal election, Bayonne, a city of the second class, adopted the provisions of the act. By a statute approved March 14, 1899 (P. L. 1899, p. 39), cities of the second class adopting its provisions were empowered to fix the salary of the mayor at not more than $2,500 per annum, and in pursuance of this act the salary of the mayor of Bayonne was fixed at the maximum amount. Thereupon, on May 17. 1899, the council passed an ordinance providing for the payment to its president of an annual salary of $1,250. This ordinance is how before us for consideration, the city and the president of the council having been brought in for its defense. It is settled by the decision of the court of errors in De Hart v. Atlantic City, 43 Atl. 742, that such a limitation as is expressed in said act of 1892, by which its operation is confined to cities adopting its provisions at the municipal election held next after its passage, will render the act special, and therefore, if it attempts to regulate the internal affairs of cities, unconstitutional. Hence the act of 1892 affords no legal support for this ordinance. None other is suggested.

It is urged in the brief of counsel for the defendants that this proceeding is an attack upon the office of president of the council, and therefore should be instituted by quo warranto. But evidently it is not. Its legal design is solely to test the lawfulness of a municipal ordinance providing for the payment of an official salary, and the legal effect of our judgment is merely to overturn that ordinance. For this purpose,...