Williams v. Cates, 30425
| Decision Date | 02 December 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 30425,30425 |
| Parties | Harold E. WILLIAMS et al. v. Goodwin 'Shag' CATES et al. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Reuben A. Garland, Jr., Atlanta, for appellants.
Webb, Parker, Young & Ferguson, Robert Young, Atlanta, for appellees.
This is a quo warranto case, here on appeal from an order of the Fulton County Superior Court dismissing appellants' petition for failure to state a claim.
Appellants are Harold E. Williams and Hal S. Crawford, who were nominated to be members of the Fulton County Board of Elections by Williams in his capacity as Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Fulton County, pursuant to the provisions of the controlling Local Act, Ga.L.1967, pp. 3211-3215. Appellees are the members of the Fulton County Commission and the present holders of the contested seats on the board. The Act provides that there shall be five members of such board, one to be appointed by the 'governing authority of such county' (here, the Fulton County Commission), and four others, two each from nominations made by the chairman of the county executive committee of the (generally speaking) two most populous parties in the county.
The pertinent portion of the Act states as follows: 'Two members shall be appointed by the governing authority of such county from nominations made by the chairman of the county executive committee of the political party . . ..' (Section 2(a), Ga.L.1967, p. 3211.) It is critical that the Act does not say how many nominations must be submitted from which the governing authority may choose. This is the issue which divides the litigants here. Appellants' names were the only two nominations submitted for these posts. Insisting that they wanted six nominations, the governing authority rejected the list of two. Insisting that two alone were required, Williams resubmitted only his name and Crawford's. The governing authority then reappointed to the posts in issue appellees Leach and Watkins, the incumbents. Appellants brought suit asking that Leach and Watkins be removed, and that the county commission be enjoined from filling the posts without proper consideration of the appellants' nominations. The trial court, as noted above, dismissed the petition.
As an initial matter, we note two things. One, the trial court correctly refused to remove Leach and Watkins in light of the fact that they were incumbents and under Section 5 of the Act, each board member shall serve 'until his successor is appointed and qualified.' Secondly, the remedies provided by the Georgia Election Code do not oust quo warranto as a possible remedy to challenge one's position as an officeholder. White v. Miller, 235 Ga. 192, 219 S.E.2d 123.
Our study of the Act, which presents some drafting problems, yields few clues to the legislature's intention in this respect. What we consider determinative is that the Act speaks of a 'governing authority,' which is obviously the county commission, but it also speaks of an 'appointing authority.' It is clear that these two bodies are not the same, because in section 4 the governing authority is given a function if the appointing authority defaults in...
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Burns v. Kurtenbach
...Warren v. Brown, 57 S.D. 528, 234 N.W. 38 (1930); see also State Ex Inf. Ryan v. Bond, 546 S.W.2d 1 (Mo.1977); Williams v. Cates, 235 Ga. 651, 221 S.E.2d 422 (1975). Turning to the merits of the proceeding, Burns contends that Kurtenbach and Scholten are ineligible to serve as board members......
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Cates v. Williams, 31005
...litigation over recent attempted appointments to the Fulton County Board of Elections, which we earlier considered in Williams v. Cates, 235 Ga. 651, 221 S.E.2d 422 (1975). The facts of the dispute are set out in that opinion. We ruled there that Williams, as a political party chairman, was......