Williams v. City of Nashville

• Decision Date: 14 February 1891
• Citation: 15 S.W. 364
• Parties: WILLIAMS <I>et al.</I> v. CITY OF NASHVILLE.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 364

15 S.W. 364

WILLIAMS et al. v. CITY OF NASHVILLE.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

February 14, 1891.

Appeal from chancery court of Davidson; ANDREW ALLISON, Chancellor.

Colyar, Shelton & Colyar, for complainants. John L. Nolen, for petitioners. Andrew J. Caldwell and J. M. Anderson, for the city of Nashville.

CALDWELL, J.

By chapter 33 of acts passed at the extra session of 1890, the general assembly undertook to annex certain territory to the city of Nashville. The outer limits of the territory so annexed are defined by a very irregular line, with numerous angles, including and excluding property equally near the heart of the city, without any apparently good reason therefor. In two instances property belonging to manufacturing corporations, and situated near the interior of the annexed territory, was excluded by the exclusion of narrow strips of ground connecting that on which the factories and other buildings stand with the territory in the county. The complainants owned property situated within the boundaries of the annexed territory. They brought this bill to restrain the city from collecting taxes and exercising municipal control over their property, and for general relief, on the allegation that said act of assembly is unconstitutional and void for several reasons specified. The bill was dismissed on demurrer, and complainants have appealed and assigned error.

First. It is insisted that the act in question, being a special law, falls within the constitutional prohibition that "no corporation shall be created, or its powers increased or diminished, by special laws," (Const. art. 11, § 8, cl. 2,) and that it is therefore void. Without entering into a discussion of this provision of the constitution, we content ourselves with a citation of cases in which it has been adjudged to apply only to private and not to municipal corporations. State v. Wilson, 12 Lea, 246; Ballentine v. Mayor, etc., 15 Lea, 633.

Second. Nashville's present city government was organized under chapter 114, Acts 1883. The forty eighth section prescribes the mode in which territory adjoining any municipal corporation organized thereunder may be brought within its corporate limits. Sections 1601 and 1602 of the Code also prescribe the mode in which "territory adjoining any municipality may be added thereto and included in the corporate limits thereof." It is contended that these are general laws, and that, as long as they remain upon the statutebooks unrepealed, there are no other means by which the corporate boundaries of any town or city can be enlarged; that the act impeached is void because inhibited by the first clause of section 8, art. 11, of the constitution, which is in these words: "The legislature shall have no power to suspend any general law for the benefit of any particular individual, nor to pass any law for the benefit of individuals inconsistent with the general laws of the land." The statutes referred to are general laws in the sense that they present the same method of annexation to citizens and freeholders in territory to which they apply respectively throughout the state, but pertaining, as they do, exclusively to municipalities in their political aspect, which may always be controlled as well by special as by general legislation, they do not stand in the way of the act in question here, or render it unconstitutional. By their passage the legislature did not surrender and could not have surrendered its power and obligation to enlarge or diminish the corporate limits of any town or city whenever the public exigency demands that it should be done. Incorporated towns and cities are but arms or instrumentalities of the state government, creatures of the legislature, and subject to its control at will. It may establish and may abolish at pleasure. Luehrman v. Taxing Dist., 2 Lea, 433, and authorities there cited; State v. Wilson, 12 Lea, 257; State v. Waggoner, 88 Tenn. 293, 12 S. W. Rep. 721; Cooley, Const. Lim. 230, 231. To hold that the legislature could not enlarge the corporate limits by an act passed for that purpose would be to deny that it could create or abolish; for the greater includes the lesser in law, as in mathematics. Again, the act complained of is not inconsistent with the general laws of the land, because by these laws the power to create or abolish, enlarge or diminish, municipalities is reposed in the legislature. The power of annexation by a prescribed method was conferred on citizens and freeholders concerned; and, at the same time, the inherent power of annexation, by special act, was left in the legislature. The situation was as that of two laws, co-existing, by either of which the same result might be accomplished, and in which resort to one would not be inconsistent with or a suspension of the other.

Third. It is contended that this act is void because...