Village of Ridgeland v. Madison County

• Decision Date: 03 June 1929
• Docket Number: 27978
• Citation: 154 Miss. 613,122 So. 753
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: VILLAGE OF RIDGELAND et al. v. MADISON COUNTY

122 So. 753

154 Miss. 613

VILLAGE OF RIDGELAND et al. v. MADISON COUNTY

No. 27978

Supreme Court of Mississippi

June 3, 1929

(Division B.)

1. MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. Legislature has plenary power over municipal streets, and can divest municipality of all control over streets.

Power of legislature over municipal streets is plenary, and it has power to divest municipalities of all control over their streets.

2. HIGHWAYS. Under statute county may build highway through village without village's consent, and route need not follow established street (Laws 1928, chapter 82).

Under Laws 1928, chapter 82, county has right to build highway through village without consent of village authorities, and route need not follow one of established streets of city.

Division B

APPEAL from chancery court of Madison county.

HON. V J. STRICKER, Chancellor.

Suit by Madison county against the Village of Ridgeland and others to enjoin defendants from interfering with the construction of a highway. An injunction was granted, and a motion to dissolve the injunction was overruled, and defendants appealed. Affirmed.

Affirmed.

H. B Greaves, of Canton, for appellants.

In the case of Blocker v. State, 72 Miss. 720, the court held the jurisdiction of the municipality superior to the board of supervisors.

This case is cited and approved in Town of Isola v. Humphreys County, 99 So. 147.

The history of the legislation of the joint control of roads running through municipalities begins with the Acts of 1910, chapter 144, or page 257 of the Laws of 1912, the latter being section 7179 of Hemingway's Code of 1917. Section 170 of the Constitution of Mississippi; Acts of 1924, page 190, chapter 143; Laws of 1926, chapter 218, page 328.

Appellant concedes that the legislature has a right to invest the board of supervisors with full jurisdiction over the roads or streets of any municipality, great or small, but appellant contends that there is nothing in the statute, as now read, that gives the board of supervisors a right to go into a municipality and lay off a highway, regardless of the streets of the municipality.

Atkinson v. Decatur, 131 Miss. 707; Tishomingo County v. McConville, 139 Miss. 589.

Under sec. 337 of the Code of 1906, section 2946 of the Code of 1892, and section 5854 of Hemingway's Code of 1917, Laws of 1897, chapter 27, municipalities were given the right of eminent domain with regard to laying off of its streets. This tends to confirm appellant's view that the municipality has full authority over its streets, and the board of supervisors has none further than the legislature sees fit to delegate to it.

The board of supervisors have the right to run through any municipality by appropriating any of the streets already laid out, however, the court will notice that every single act passed, defining the rights of the board of supervisors to go through municipalities, uses the word "may."

The board of supervisors only has a right to take over streets already established.

Chapter 155, Acts of 1928, page 209, amending section 4405, Code of 1906 is a safeguard requiring the board of supervisors to go through municipalities according to the streets already laid off, to prevent the arbitrary idea and will of the state highway engineer in running diagonally through any municipality in this state.

A. K. Foot, of Canton, for appellee.

It is an elementary proposition, admitted by counsel for appellants in his brief, and using Judge DILLON'S language (which was quoted by Judge WHITFIELD in Meridian v. Western Union, 72 Miss. 910, 18 So. 84; 29 L. R. A. 770), that "All power which it (the municipality) has over its streets is derived from the legislature, whose power over them is 'supreme and transcendent.'"

City of Canton v. Canton Cotton Warehouse Co., 84 Miss. 268, 36 So. 266; 105 Am. St. Rep. 428; 65 L. R. A. 561; Laramie County v. Albany County, 92 U.S. Rep. 307.

The decision in the Blocker case (72 Miss. 720), is based of course upon the fact that the legislature had clothed the municipality with full jurisdiction in the matter of its streets. Judge WHITFIELD said:

"The scheme provided by this chapter for the government of cities, towns, and villages is one admirable in its whole and in its details, and is intended to stand apart to itself as the law of such municipality except when otherwise specially provided."

Appellee contends that the legislature, the "transcendent" authority, has most emphatically "otherwise specifically provided" for the locating, laying out, and constructing of state highways, and especially primary highways or main trunk lines of its highway system and especially federal aid projects; and that the general laws in the code chapter on municipalities pertaining to the powers of a municipality over its streets must give way to the several state highway acts.

The legislature, by chapter 82, Acts of 1928, legislated specially on this particular subject.

The proper construction of this act will settle the questions involved in this case; in other words, this case is simply a matter of legislative construction.

36 Cyc. 1147; Wellsburg, etc., v. Traction Co., 56 W.Va. 18, 48 S.E. 746; Smith v. Halfacre, 6 Howard 600; 1 Story's Com. 387.

Where a constitution is not entirely explicit in itself, and requires construction, it ought not to be so construed as to cripple the government, and render it unequal to the objects for which it is declared to be instituted.

9 Wheat. 1.

The trend of legislation in this matter of the construction of public highways, year by year, gets farther away from the local or neighborhood viewpoint to the county-wide and inter-county viewpoint.

Laws of 1916, chapter 168; Laws of 1916, chapter 173; chapter 203, Laws of 1920; chapter 129, Hemingway's 1927 Code; chapter 278, Laws of 1924; chapter 279, Laws of 1924; chapter 218, Laws of 1926; chapter 45, Extraordinary Session 1928.

The legislature, to meet the decision in the Isola case, enacted chapter 82 of the Laws of 1928, in which it is provided that the board of supervisors of any county in the state may, "at their discretion, construct and maintain, or contribute to the construction and maintenance of any state highway previously established according to law, within or without the corporate limits of any town or village."

It is familiar learning that, in the construction of statutes, courts chiefly desire to reach and know the real intention of the framers of the law, and reaching and knowing it, then to adopt that interpretation which will meet the real meaning of the legislature, though such interpretation may be beyond or within, wider or narrower than, the mere letter of the enactment.

Board of Education v. Railroad, 72 Miss. 236, 16 So. 489; quoted with approval by Chief Justice SMITH in Kennington v. Hemingway, 101 Miss. 259, 57 So. 809; 39 L. R. A. (N. S.) 541; Ann. Cases 1914B, 392.

It seems ridiculous to consider that a small village, which by the grace of the legislature was brought into existence and given the privilege of exercising governmental functions to a limited degree, would attempt to use that grace and privilege to thwart the great public policy of its creator.

The state highway commission is the state itself, its alter ego.

State Highway Commission v. City of Elizabeth, Court of Chancery of New Jersey, February 1, 1928 (140 Am. Rep. 335).

Under Laws 1928, chap. 82, the county has the right to construct a highway through a municipality, and the route need not follow one of established streets of the city.

OPINION

GRIFFITH, J.

Under chapter 278, Laws 1924, amended as to additional highways by chapter 218, Laws 1926, and chapter 45, Laws 1928 (Ex. Sess.), a system of state highways was "established, created and defined;" the first named among them being a central highway beginning at the Tennessee line near Horn Lake, and extending through Canton and Jackson, to the Louisiana line near Osyka. By the original chapter the procedure was established by which the maintenance of these state highways was to be taken over by the state highway department. In this general connection a more expeditious method was provided by chapter 155, Laws 1928, for the coordination of these highways with the machinery of the general government in the matter of federal aid projects.

A link in the state highway above mentioned extends from the northern terminus of the Hinds county concrete highway (F. A. P. No. 79-A) near Tougaloo station northward to Canton. On July 20, 1928, such steps and proceedings had been taken by the county of Madison in cooperation with the...