Tennant v. Finane, 40089
| Decision Date | 26 March 1956 |
| Docket Number | No. 40089,40089 |
| Parties | William L. TENNANT v. Otto T. FINANE and City of Vicksburg. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Prewitt & Bullard, Vicksburg, for appellant.
J. D. Thames, Vicksburg, for appellees.
This is another attempt to review by a bill in chancery court the removal of a city employee who was under the Civil Service Act.
The bill of complaint by appellant Tennant was brought against Otto T. Finane, Chief of Police of the City of Vicksburg, and against the City. It charged that complainant was a patrolman for the Vicksburg Police Department, and that he had valuable rights under the Civil Service Act of 1944, Miss.Laws 1944, Chapter 209; Miss.Code 1942, Secs. 3825-30 to 3825-45. It was averred that, under said statutes and the civil service rules and regulations of the Board of Civil Service Commission of the City of Vicksburg, complainant was vested with rights which were violated without authority of law when on November 9, 1954, the defendant Finane, Chief of Police, fired him from his job; that both of the defendants ignored the requirements of the statutes and rules and regulations of the civil service commission of the city; and that complainant was ready, able and willing to perform the duties of his job from which he had been wrongfully discharged. The bill prayed for damages in the amount of his salary from the time of his discharge until the date of the filing of the bill, June 7, 1955, for a mandatory injunction requiring defendants to allow complainant to discharge his duties as a patrolman, and for compensatory and punitive damages.
Attached to the bill as Exhibit A was a copy of the rules and regulations of the Board of Civil Service Commission of the city. Section 12.3 thereof provided a procedure for review of such removal by the civil service commission, and subsequently by the circuit court. It is a transcript of Code Section 3825-40, of the Miss. Civil Service Act, which prescribes procedure for appeals from such removal. Exhibit B was a letter dated January 8, 1955, from complainant's attorney to the chairman of the civil service board, in which complainant charged that on November 9, 1954, he had been accused falsely of taking money from a parking meter on the city streets, and was fired by the chief of police who failed to give him any written specifications of charges. The letter demanded an investigation and hearing into the matter of his dismissal, and reinstatement. Exhibit C to the bill was a letter from the city attorney to complainant's counsel advising that an investigation of the matter disclosed 'that the service servance of Mr. Tennant was not such as was covered by the terms and provisions of the Civil Service Act and is not governed by the rules and regulations' of the city's civil service commission; that under the facts there was nothing for the civil service commission to do with reference to this matter.
The defendants-appellees demurred to the bill of complaint, on the grounds that the chancery court had no jurisdiction, complainant had a plain, adequate and complete remedy at law, and the bill did not state a cause of action. The trial court sustained this general demurrer, and from that action complainant has appealed.
The order of the chancery court sustaining appellees' demurrer must be affirmed. The...
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