Telfer v. School Dist. No. 31 of Blaine County, 5602

• Decision Date: 26 January 1931
• Docket Number: 5602
• Parties: JAMES TELFER, IRVIN PAYNE, LEE ELLIOTT, JOHN HURST, REUBEN CROSS and RAY FRIPP, Appellants, v. SCHOOL DISTRICT No. 31 OF BLAINE COUNTY, IDAHO, and Its Trustees, T. A. BAPTIE et al., B. P. THAMM, County Auditor of Blaine County, Idaho, and EMMA REED, County Treasurer of Blaine County, Idaho, Respondents
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

295 P. 632

50 Idaho 274

JAMES TELFER, IRVIN PAYNE, LEE ELLIOTT, JOHN HURST, REUBEN CROSS and RAY FRIPP, Appellants, v. SCHOOL DISTRICT No. 31 OF BLAINE COUNTY, IDAHO, and Its Trustees, T. A. BAPTIE et al., B. P. THAMM, County Auditor of Blaine County, Idaho, and EMMA REED, County Treasurer of Blaine County, Idaho, Respondents

No. 5602

Supreme Court of Idaho

January 26, 1931

SCHOOL DISTRICTS-CORPORATE ORGANIZATION-COLLATERAL ATTACK-APPEAL AND ERROR-DEMURRER-SCOPE OF REVIEW.

1. Supreme court is concerned only with trial court's order sustaining demurrer and judgment of dismissal, and not grounds upon which ruling was made.

2. School district having existed, exercising functions of public school district over well-defined territory as public corporation for ten years, legal entity could not be attacked by land owner within district in injunction proceeding against its officers.

APPEAL from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, for Blaine County. Hon. Dana E. Brinck, Presiding Judge.

Action to have certain lands decreed not part of School District No 31, and for injunction restraining assessment and collection of taxes against said lands. Judgment for defendants. Affirmed.

Judgment affirmed, with costs to respondents.

A. F James, for Appellants.

In order to invest a board of county commissioners with jurisdiction, it must affirmatively appear that the statutory jurisdictional requirements were complied with. (Smith v. Canyon County, 39 Idaho 222, 226 P. 1070; State v. Catlin, 33 Idaho 437, 195 P. 628; In re Bonds of Madera Irr. Dist., 92 Cal. 296, 27 Am. St. 106, 28 P 272, 14 L. R. A. 755; School Dist. No. 28 v. Larson, 80 Mont. 363, 260 P. 1042.)

No presumption of jurisdiction attaches to the proceedings of actions of a board of county commissioners in such matters. ( Smith v. Canyon County, supra; School Dist. No. 28 v. Larson, supra.)

When the order of the board of county commissioners is void, it may be attacked directly or collaterally. (Smith v. Canyon County, supra (this was an action brought by a private party attacking the legality of the organization of a school district); Dunbar v. Board of Commrs., 5 Idaho 407, 49 P. 409; 15 C. J., p. 472 (27); Fremont County v. Brandon, 6 Idaho 482, 56 P. 264; Anaheim Sugar Co. v. Orange Co., 181 Cal. 212, 183 P. 809.)

Where the order of a county board creating a school district is void for want of jurisdiction, the aggrieved party is not limited to an appeal. (Smith v. Canyon County, supra.)

The jurisdictional questions, as distinguished from mere irregularities need not necessarily be raised on appeal, but may be raised by any form of direct or even collateral attack. (Smith v. Canyon County, supra; Northern P. Ry. Co. v. Chapman, 29 Idaho 294, 158 P. 560.)

Even under the authorities holding that quo warranto is the proper procedure to determine the question of the legal existence of a municipal corporation such as a school district, the right to maintain a writ of injunction to determine the question of its boundary lines and the question as to whether or not certain territory is a part of a given district, is upheld. ( School Dist. No. 17 v. Eaton, 97 Okla. 177, 223 P. 857; 1 McQuillin on Municipal Corporations, p. 770, (31); Scilley v. Red Lodge Rosebud Irr. Dist., 83 Mont. 282, 272 P. 543.)

The defense of laches cannot prevail unless it appears that it has resulted in injury to someone not responsible for the delay, or unless the delay, taken with other circumstances in the case, furnishes satisfactory evidence that the cause of action has been abandoned, in which latter case, however, the presumption of abandonment may be overcome by other facts and circumstances. (Smith v. Faris-Kesl Const. Co., 27 Idaho 407, 150 P. 25; Just v. Idaho Canal & Imp. Co., 16 Idaho 639, 133 Am. St. 140, 102 P. 381.)

J. G. Hedrick, for Respondents.

An individual cannot attack the annexation of certain territory for a district by injunction, as in the case at bar, for such an attack would be, not alone upon the order annexing the territory to the district, but on the district as a whole. The land when it was annexed to the district became a part of that district; it has received all the benefits and carried all the burdens of the entire district since it was annexed. To strike out any portion of the district would be to attack the district as a whole and this cannot be done in this kind of a proceeding. (State v. Evans, 82 Ore. 46, 160 P. 140, 143; School Dist. No. 115 v. School Dist. No. 54, 34 Ore. 97, 55 P. 98; Atchison, T. & S. F. R. R. Co. v. Wilson, 33 Kan. 223, 6 P. 281; School Dist. No. 2 v. School Dist. No. 1, 45 Kan. 543, 26 P. 43; School Dist. No. 21 v. Board of Commrs., 15 Wyo. 73, 11 Ann. Cas. 1058, 86 P. 24; Henderson v. School Dist. No. 24, 75 Mont. 154, 242 P. 979; Chambers v. Walker, 85 Okla. 289, 206 P. 202; Griffin v. Thomas, 86 Okla. 70, 206 P. 604; Van Wagner v. McFarland, 58 Cal.App. 115, 208 P. 345; Morgan v. Independent School Dist. No. 26, 36 Idaho 372, 380, 211 P. 529, 531; Oregon Short Line R. R. Co. v. Kimama Highway Dist., 287 F. 734, 738.)

We think this question is finally settled in this state in the case of Morgan v. Independent School Dist. No. 26, supra, in which this court, after reviewing a great many of the decisions holds that a school district cannot be attacked collaterally or by a private citizen.

MCNAUGHTON, J. Lee, C. J., Givens and Varian, JJ., and Adair, D. J., concur.

OPINION

MCNAUGHTON, J.

This is an action in which appellants seek to obtain a judgment decreeing that their lands are not within or part of School District No. 31, and decreeing them to be part of School District No. 25, formerly School District No. 42, all in Blaine county, Idaho; and enjoining the trustees of School District No. 31 from levying taxes against their lands, and also the county officials from extending against their lands any levies made by School District No. 31.

For this purpose the complaint alleges facts which show that originally and prior to June 20, 1911, their lands were a part of School District No. 42; that on June 20, 1911, the board of commissioners of Blaine county, pursuant to a defective petition, entered an order creating District No. 13, composed entirely of territory within what then was and theretofore had been District No. 42, and including the lands of plaintiffs. The complaint affirmatively states many omissions in the preliminary proceedings required by the laws of this state to authorize the commissioners to create school districts, and it is claimed this order of the board creating District No. 13 was null and void for want of jurisdiction in the county commissioners.

It is alleged that another District No. 13 was created by order of the board of commissioners on July 22, 1919. It is also alleged that prior to October 16, 1919, the county superintendent of Blaine county filed with the commissioners certain petitions of residents of new District No. 13, and Districts Nos. 14, 15 and 26, asking that said districts be consolidated into a school district, and that residents of Districts No. 14 and No. 26, prior to said date, petitioned that "the School District on West Fork of Fish Creek that recently lapsed," (apparently the territory of the original District No. 13) be included in the new consolidated district. On October 16, 1919, the prayer of the petitions of the residents of Districts Nos. 13, 14, 15 and 26 was granted, and on the 14th of April, 1920, the prayer of the petitions of the residents of Districts No. 14 and No. 26, to include in the proposed new school district that territory on West Fish Creek, which it was claimed had recently lapsed, was granted. That is, as we understand the complaint, Districts Nos. 13, 14, 15 and 26 were on October 16, 1919, consolidated by order of the board into a district designated as District No. 31, and on the 14th of April, 1920, the territory on the West Fork of Fish Creek, comprising 68 sections, and described by metes and bounds, was included in or annexed to District No. 31. Also that plaintiffs' lands, neither the extent nor description of which is set forth in the complaint, were within this territory and covered by the order of the board dated April 14, 1920, and thereby made a part of District No. 31. The complaint states omissions and defects in these petitions relative to the inclusion of these Fish Creek lands sufficient to show lack of authority in the board of county commissioners to lawfully include them in District No. 31.

Under our school laws the county commissioners had general jurisdiction to enter the order upon proper preliminary steps being taken.

It further appears that in every case the petitioners were acting in good faith under statutes which, if sufficiently complied with, authorized the county commissioners to enter each and all the orders complained of; that the commissioners, in good faith, entered the orders from ten to twenty years ago; that pursuant to the orders of the 16th of October, 1919, and of the 14th of April, 1920, what is known as District No. 31 came into existence, with definite boundaries extending over and including plaintiffs' lands, and has since then existed as a political subdivision of the state, performing all the duties and exercising all the powers over all of said lands which the state has conferred upon regularly organized school districts.

Defendants demurred upon the grounds, among others: 1. That the complaint failed to state a cause of action. 2. That plaintiffs did not have legal capacity to sue. The trial court sustained the demurrer upon the first ground. Plaintiffs refused to plead further and judgment of dismissal was entered, from which judgment this appeal is prosecuted.

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