Weber v. Lee County

• Decision Date: 01 December 1867
• Citation: 6 Wall. 210,18 L.Ed. 781,73 U.S. 210
• Parties: WEBER v. LEE COUNTY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

73 U.S. 210

18 L.Ed. 781

6 Wall. 210

WEBER v. LEE COUNTY.

December Term, 1867

ERROR to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.

Messrs. Dick and Grant, for the plaintiff in error; Mr. Thomas Ewing, Sr., contra.

Mr. Justice CLIFFORD delivered the opinion of the court; stating the case.

Bonds to the amount of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars were issued by the proper officers of Lee County in the State of Iowa, in favor of three railroad companies, in equal proportions. Recitals of the respective bonds were, that they were issued to some one of those railroad companies, pursuant to a vote of the people of the county, at an election held September 10th, 1856, authorizing the county judge to make a subscription to the capital stock of the railroad, and issue the bonds for the amount of the subscription.

Irregularities occurred in the preliminary proceedings, but the legislature of the State, on the twenty-ninth day of January, 1857, passed an act declaring, in substance and effect, that all of the votes taken in the county, in the form of a joint or several proposition, whether the county would aid in the construction of one or more railroads, specifying the amount to be given to each, as a joint or several proposition, and the subscriptions made by the county, and the bonds of the county, issued or to be issued in pursuance of those votes and subscriptions, should be regarded as legal and valid, and that such bonds, issued or to be issued under such votes and subscriptions, should be a valid lien upon the taxable property of the county.

Second section of the same act also provided that the county judge, or other proper authority of the county, should levy and collect a tax to meet the payment of the principal and interest of such bonds; and that the county, in any suit brought to recover the principal or interest of the bonds, should not be allowed to plead that the same were usurious, irregular, or invalid, in consequence of the informalities cured by that act.

Determined, as it would seem, to cure all informalities, the legislature added a third section, which provides that all bonds issued by the county, in pursuance of any such vote of the people of the county, shall be valid and of full legal and binding force and effect, notwithstanding any informality or irregularity in the submission of the question to a vote of the people, or in the taking of the vote authorizing the subscription to such railroad and the issuing of such bonds.

On their face they purport to have been issued under the authority of a vote of the people of the county, and therefore fall directly within the terms of the curative act of the General Assembly. They are for one thousand dollars each and are payable in twenty years from date, with interest at the rate of eight per cent., payable semi-annually, on the delivery of the interest coupons.

Plaintiff was the holder of a large number of these bonds, and the corporation defendants failing to pay the interest as it accrued, he commenced an action of assumpsit against them to recover the same, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Iowa, and the judges of the Circuit Court for that district being interested in the event of the suit, the same was, with the...