State v. Spaude
| Citation | 37 Minn. 322 |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
| Decision Date | 28 July 1887 |
| Parties | STATE OF MINNESOTA, <I>ex rel.</I> Jerome A. Oblinger, <I>vs.</I> FERDINAND SPAUDE. |
Moses E. Clapp, Attorney General, McKenzie & Oblinger, and Kipp & Preble, for relator.
W. H. Leeman and Cadwell & Parker, for respondent.
The relator claims to be village assessor of the village of Gaylord, in the town of Dryden, county of Sibley. The respondent is assessor of the town of Dryden. The questions in the case are: First, has the village of Gaylord a legal organization as a village? and, second, if it has, is it entitled to have a village assessor?
To incorporate the village, proceedings were had under Laws 1883, c. 73. That act was declared void in State v. Simons, 32 Minn. 540 (21 N. W. Rep. 750,) for the reason that it attempted to delegate to the district courts powers essentially legislative. Before the decision in that case was announced, proceedings were had under the act for the incorporation of a large number of villages, and they had gone into operation under it. Laws 1885, c. 231, provided that all such villages "be, and they are hereby, duly incorporated as villages, with the same territorial boundaries specified in the order or judgment of the district court declaring any such village to be an incorporated village under the provisions of said act; and all such villages shall possess, and are hereby endowed with, all the franchises, rights, powers, and privileges, and subject to the duties, in said act enumerated and contemplated;" and provides that all officers of any such villages shall continue to occupy their respective offices, and declares all official acts of said officers legalized, and of the same force and validity as if the villages had been duly organized and incorporated from the date of the entry of the judgment or filing of the order of the district court purporting to incorporate any such village under said act, (of 1883.)
The act of 1885 is claimed to be invalid as in violation of sections 33 and 34, added to article 4 of the constitution of the state in the amendments of 1881:
It is claimed that the act of 1885 is in its nature a special law, and not uniform in its operation throughout the state. Its operation is not confined to any part of the state. Whenever, in any part of the state, there is a village that comes within its classification, it operates. A law, to be general, need not operate alike upon all the inhabitants of the state, or all the cities, or all the villages, in the state. To require that would be utterly impracticable. A law is general which operates alike upon all the inhabitants or all the cities, or all the villages, or other subjects of a class of such subjects of legislation. That for the purpose of legislation it may be necessary to make, and that the legislature may make, such classification, is undoubted. The only practical limitation to this power is that the classification shall be based upon some natural reason, — some reason suggested by necessity; by some difference in the situation and circumstances of the subjects classified suggesting the necessity of different legislation with respect to them, — and shall not be merely arbitrary, with no apparent reason except a desire to evade, under the forms of a general law, the constitutional inhibition of special legislation. The act of 1883 was not contrary to the provisions of the constitution above quoted. Had it been valid in other respects, and the incorporation of villages under it had failed by reason of omitting some of its provisions, a curative act, like the act of 1885, if it reached all villages within that predicament, could hardly have been called a special law within the meaning of the constitution. A law curing certain defects in the execution or record of deeds, though its operation would of course be...
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