Whittaker v. Vill. of Venice
| Decision Date | 05 May 1894 |
| Citation | 150 Ill. 195,37 N.E. 240 |
| Parties | WHITTAKER et al. v. VILLAGE OF VENICE et al. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from circuit court, Madison county; A. S. Wilderman, Judge.
Petition by John Whittaker and others against the village of Venice and others for a writ of certiorari. Defendants obtained judgment. Petitioners appeal. Affirmed.
John G. Irwin, for appellants.
Travous & Warnock, for appellees.
This is a petition by certain owners of land included in territory claimed to have been annexed to the village of Venice, in Madison county, under ‘An act to provide for annexing and excluding territory to and from cities, towns, and villages,’ etc., approved April 10, 1872 (1 Starr & C. Ann. St. p. 515), for a writ of certiorari directed to said village and the president and board of trustees thereof and the village clerk and the recorder of the county, commanding them to certify and bring into court a transcript of the records, documents, and files relating to said annexation, for the inspection of the court; and praying that said record and proceedings may be quashed, and set aside, etc. The return sets forth a copy of the petition for annexation as presented to the president and board of trustees of the village; proceedings of the board, showing that an order was entered, wherein, after finding that it was made to appear to the satisfaction of the board that the facts alleged in the petition were true, it was ordered that the prayer of the petition be granted, and that an ordinance for the annexation of said territory, drawn and presented to the board, be adopted, and a copy thereof, with a plat of the territory annexed, be recorded in the recorder's office of said county; also a copy of said ordinance, and certified copies thereof and of said plat from the records of said county; also certain proceedings in relation to a plat of West Madison addition to said village, and the approval thereof by said board; also certain proceedings, consisting of petition, certificate of county clerk, order for disconnection, ordinance for disconnection, adoption of said ordinance, and order for the record thereof, in relation to the disannexing of a part of the territory so annexed. The circuit court rendered judgment quashing the writ, and for costs, against petitioners, to which exception was taken, and from which the present appeal is prosecuted.
1. A motion is made to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. The object of the common-law writ of certiorari is to bring up the record of a proceeding from an inferior to a superior tribunal. When the return is made, the superior tribunal tries the case, not upon the allegations contained in the petition for the writ, nor upon any issue of fact, but by the record alone, and upon the inspection thereof, as such record is returned in obedience to the writ. It is the duty of the court to determine whether the inferior court had jurisdiction, and whether it exceeded its jurisdiction, or otherwise proceeded in violation of law. Commissioners v. Supervisors of Carthage, 27 Ill. 140.Here the return sets out the proceedings taken under and in pursuance of the act of the legislature above referred to, and that act is the sole authority for the annexation of the territory in question by the board of trustees of the village. This being so, the petitioners submitted, among others, the following proposition to be held as law by the court upon the hearing of the cause: This proposition the court refused to hold as law. In view of the issue presented by the return to the writ, and in view of the nature of the proposition of law thus asked and refused, we think that the validity of the statute above mentioned is a question which is legitimately presented by the record, and that, therefore, this court has jurisdiction. It follows that the motion to dismiss must be overruled.
2. The act of an inferior tribunal, which can be reviewed on certiorari by a superior tribunal, must be judicial or quasi judicial in its character. Commissioners v. Griffin, 134 Ill. 330, 25 N. E. 995. The acts of officers of municipal corporations must be plainly judicial in character in order to justify an...
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