Town of Greenfield v. City of Milwaukee
| Decision Date | 09 October 1956 |
| Citation | 273 Wis. 484,78 N.W.2d 909 |
| Parties | TOWN OF GREENFIELD, a body corporate, Appellant, v. CITY OF MILWAUKEE, a municipal corporation, Respondent. |
| Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
William H. Bowman, Milwaukee. Gauer, Buer & Murray, Milwaukee, of counsel, for appellant.
Walter J. Mattison, City Atty., Richard F. Maruszewski and John F. Cook, Asst. City Attys., Milwaukee, for respondent.
Section 62.07, Stats., among other things, provides that a petition for annexation presented to the council of the annexing municipality must be signed by a majority of the electors in the territory whose annexation is sought. The Town contends the trial court's Finding of Fact that the petition was signed by a sufficient number of electors is contrary to the great weight and clear preponderance of the evidence.
If a finding of the trial court is not contrary to the great weight and clear preponderance of the evidence it must be sustained. Gordon v. Gordon, 1954, 270 Wis. 332, 339, 71 N.W.2d 386; Stikl v. DeBoth, 1950, 258 Wis. 17, 44 N.W.2d 542. The petition in question was signed by a Mr. and Mrs. Drewa. Afterwards, and before the council acted, they signed a second petition withdrawing their signatures, and still later they signed a third one reinstating them. If the last document was signed and filed with the council before the council acted, November 18, 1954, the petition for annexation bore the signatures of the required number of electors; if the Drewas signed later, it did not and the city ordinance of annexation adopted in response to the petition is invalid. The evidence of the time of such signing conflicted. Mrs. Drewa was sure that she and her husband had signed the paper reinstating their signatures at some time after November 18, 1954, which was a Thursday. This fact was fixed in her memory by her recollection that they signed on a Saturday night, which was her husband's night for a bath. Mr. Drewa had no such vivid recollection; but it does appear that they signed the withdrawal of signatures on November 13, 1954. That was a Saturday in fact, and one on which he remembered bathing. There is thus a possibility that by an error of memory Mrs. Drewa identified her husband's sanitary rites with the wrong petition. For the City, the person who circulated the reinstatement petition testified positively that Mr. and Mrs. Drewa signed it on the morning of November 18; the date, November 18, 1954, appears in their own handwriting after their signatures; and the circulator testified that he filed this paper on that day before the council action and the clerk's stamp corroborates it, although the Town chairman testified that it was not in the file a few days later. With these conflicts we can not hold that the trial court's finding,--that the reinstatement of these signatures was executed and filed before the passage of the ordinance of annexation,--is contrary to the great weight and clear preponderance of the evidence.
Appellant submits that by the annexation, which puts portions of a public highway within the City, residents of the Town have been deprived of highway frontage and of the governmental services for which the highway is used. Its brief cites no evidence in support of this contention. The location of the highway is not changed and it remains public. The conclusion that Town residents have been injured by the transfer of the road to another municipal jurisdiction is a mere conclusion which we cannot accept as a fact. It might as well be concluded that the change will benefit them. We do not think this contention has merit.
The Town states that the new boundaries isolate a heavily populated section of the Town. The trial court found, and the map shows, that the area in question is not severed but is joined to the remainder of the Town by a corridor thirty feet wide and six hundred thirty feet long. Similar corridors connecting different parts of a town have been considered in Town of Lake v. City of Milwaukee, 1949, 255 Wis. 419. 39 N.W.2d 376, and In re Incorporation of Village of Elm Grove, 1953, 267 Wis. 157, 64 N.W.2d 874, and were held not to be fatal to the annexation and incorporation of the respective tracts. In the instant case the trial court found:
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