State ex rel. Ellis v. Board of Deputy State Supervisors

70 Ohio St. (N.S.) 341
Ohio Supreme Court·Decided June 21, 1904·No. No. 8993·Published

Opinions

Shatjck, J.

The pleadings inform us that on the-second day of May, 1904, the state supervisor and inspector of elections, pursuant to the provisions of the-act of April 23, 1904, appointed the defendants. Gfentschj Hopkins, Fitzgerald, and Christian as members of the board of deputy state supervisors and inspectors of elections in and for the county of Cuyahoga ; that said persons duly qualified as members .of said board and organized, as required by law, and that they thereupon demanded the ballot boxes and other property used in the conduct of elections, from, the other defendants (except Coughlin and Grongwer), who refused to deliver said property, claiming-the. right to the continued possession thereof by reason of their previous appointments, some of them as members of the board of deputy state supervisors of said county and some of them as members, of the city board of elections of the city of Cleveland, in said county, the statutes under which said previous boards had been constituted having been repealed by said act of April 23, 1904. The prayer of the petition is that the defendants other than those appointed under the recent act be ousted from the asserted right to perform said functions. It is. further made to appear that before the cause can be put at issue, heard and determined upon its merits, it will be necessary that action be taken for the holding of popular elections in said county. It also appears that the members of the former boards assert, a right to continue in office and to retain possession of said property, upon the ground that the act of [346] April 23, 1904, is unconstitutional, and its repealing section, therefore, ineffectual. The defendants Coughlin and Gongwer claim a right to be appointed as members of the board created by the act of April 23, 1904, instead of Fitzgerald and Gentsch, who were appointed by the state supervisor and inspector of elections.

The case is not now prepared for submission upon its merits, but we are called upon to determine who shall exercise the official functions which public interests require to be performed, pending the determination of the cause upon its merits. The attorney general invokes that action by a motion for an order enjoining the members of former boards from interfering with the members of the board appointed under the act of April 23, 1904, and from withholding said property from their possession. It is obvious that the public interests require that some board shall exercise these controverted functions, and every consideration of propriety tends to the conclusion that the validity of the later act should be assumed until after hearing and consideration it is found to be invalid.

The text books and numerous adjudicated cases have made common knowledge of the rule that in actions in quo warranto against an incumbent to try title to an office, the court will not enjoin the incumbent from the exercise of the functions of the office pending the determination of the question of title. This is for reasons of obvious and conclusive force. The public interests require that the functions of the office be performed by some one, and to transfer their performance from the incumbent to the contestant would deny effect to the prima facie title of [347] the former and anticipate the conclusion of the court in quo warranto, that, and not injunction, being the proper suit for testing the question of title. But attention to the precise nature of the present case will show that while those considerations are applicable here, they favor the opposite conclusion. We have no controversy as to the title to any office except as to two of the defendants, and they claim to be entitled to an office from which they are now excluded. The case calls upon us to determine which is the existing office. The act of April 23,1904, assuming its validity, abolishes the former hoards and vests the functions of both in the single board in whose favor the restraining order is sought. It is not denied that the defendants, members of the former hoards, are entitled to hold the offices to which they were appointed, if the offices continue to exist; and it is conceded that the defendants who were appointed under the act of April 23,1904, are the only persons in the office which it creates. The public interests require that these functions he performed, and to say that they should not he performed by those who were appointed under the recent act would deny effect to their prima facie title and anticipate the conclusion that the act is invalid. The action which the motion invokes is, therefore, not an interference with the performance of official duty by those who have the right prima facie, hut it is for their protection in that performance from interference by rival claimants of the authority, whose right is yet to be made apparent. That the courts will afford such protection to an officer having the apparent title is shown by numerous decisions of this court and others, which are cited in the brief of the attorney general.

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State ex rel. Ellis v. Board of Deputy State Supervisors, 70 Ohio St. (N.S.) 341 (Ohio 1904).

70 Ohio St. (N.S.) 341 (State ex rel. Ellis v. Board of Deputy State Supervisors) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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