State ex rel. Herron v. Smith

44 Ohio St. (N.S.) 348
CourtOhio Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 15, 1886
StatusPublished

This text of 44 Ohio St. (N.S.) 348 (State ex rel. Herron v. Smith) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State ex rel. Herron v. Smith, 44 Ohio St. (N.S.) 348 (Ohio 1886).

Opinions

Minshall, J.

On May 17, 1886, the general assembly passed an act entitled an act to establish an efficient board of public affairs in cities of the first grade of the first class ” (83 Ohio L. 173). It abolished the board of public works created by an act passed March 3,1880, and, among other things, provided .that the members of the board of public affairs should be appointed by the governor, and should have all the powers, perform all the duties and be the successor of the board of public works. The members of the board of public-affairs for the city of Cincinnati, the respondents in this action, were appointed by the governor, qualified as required by law, entered upon the duties of their board and the performance of the same as far as they were permitted by the relators, and were continuing to do so, whereupon the relators, who constituted the board of public works of said city at the time of the passage of the act of May 17, commenced this proceeding, setting forth their title as members of the board of public works for the city of Cincinnati, and asking that the respondents should be required to show by what title they usurped the functions of the board of the relators, and that they might be ousted therefrom by the judgment of this court.

The respondents in their answer admit that they have assumed and claim the right to perform, the public duties that were heretofore incumbent on the relators as the board of public works of Cincinnati, but say that the act that created the board of the relators was repealed by the act of May 17,1886, creating the board of the respondents, and that thereby the board of public works was abolished, and that the board of public affairs was made and became its successor, and that the performance of all its powers and duties was conferred on the board of the respondents; and [360]*360ask that the relators may be restrained from interfering with, them in the performance of their duties as such board of public affairs.

The relatoi’s reply, and in the first, second, third, and fourth paragraphs of the pleading, in substance deny (1) that the act creating the board of the respondents was, on the 17th of May, 1886, or at any other time, passed by the general assembly of the state, or that it ever became a law of the state; and (2) aver that, if it was passed, the legislature had no power to confer the appointment of the board on the govermor, and that it is unconstitutional and void.

In the fifth, and last, paragraph, it is, in substance, averred that the adoption of the act of May 17th was the result of a conspiracy between the president of the senate and seventeen members, entered into for the purpose, among other things, of abolishing the board of public works and establishing; in the language of the pleading, “ the so-called board of public affairs.” That in pursuance of this conspiracy, while Johu O’Neill and nineteen other members of the senate were absent from the senate chamber, and while only seventeen members, less than a quorum, were present, the president of the senate, with the advice and consent of the seventeen members then present, in violation of the constitution of the state and the rules of the senate, corruptly caused the clerk of the senate to enter upon its journal a resolution that John Brashears and three others, naming them, were not duly elected, and that George W. Hardacre and three others, naming them, were duly elected and entitled to seats therein; that the vote was not taken by yeas and nays, and that the majority of the members were at that time temporarily absent from the state. That afterward, without being sworn, the four, so admitted, claimed to be. members of the senate; and on the 17th of May, during the continued absence of the members before named, from the state of Ohio, the said pretended act of May 17, 1886, was declared passed and signed by the president of the senate ; and it is then averred “ that the president of the senate, the speaker of the house of representatives, and the secretary [361]*361of state,'at the time of the signing and filing of said pretended act of the general assembly of the state of Ohio, well knew that the same had not been passed, but that the same was fraudulent and void;” and that there was at no time, from the 8th of May until the adjournment of the legislature, a quorum of duly elected members present in' the senate to do business.

A demurrer has been interposed to the first four paragraphs, and a motion made to strike out the averments contained in the fifth one. The demurrer raises the question of the constitutionality of the law, and the motion, the validity of its passage.

1. If the facts averred in the motion may be considered by a court, on the question whether a statute, that appears upon the journals of both houses of the legislature to have received the requisite concurrence of their members, as provided in section 9, article 2, of the constitution, that is duly attested as a law by the presiding officer of each house, as provided in section 17, article-2, of the same instrument, and has been enrolled and filed in the office of the secretary of state as a law, as provided by statute, section 128, Revised Statutes, is not what it is thus authenticated to be, then this motion should be sustained, otherwise it should be overruled.

It seems to be well settled that courts will take judicial notice of all that is necessai’y to the authentication of a statute. It is said by Wharton, in his work on Evidence (section 295): “ Courts will take judicial notice of the modes by which domestic laws are authenticated. Hence an English court is supposed to be judicially acquainted with the rules, practice, and prerogatives of parliament; an American court with the rules, practice, aud prerogatives of the federal and state legislatures to which" it is subject. So, as we have seen, a court will take judicial notice of the journals of a legislature to determine whether an act is constitutionally passed, or whether it has passed by reason of not having been returned in proper time by the governor.” There is then no need of stating what appears upon the [362]*362journals of a legislature relative to the passage'of a law; such, matters are judicially noticed without averment, and the same effect given them as if averred. Bliss on Co. PI. 178. As no issue of fact can be taken upon what a court is required as a court to know, such averments in a pleading are redundant and irrelevant, and on motion should be stricken out. Pom. Rem., section 551.

Therefore, unless courts may hear parol testimony, offered to affect the passage of a duly authenticated statute, the matter contained in the fifth paragraph of the reply should be stricken out as redundant and irrelevant, as it appears from the journals of the two houses of the general assembly that this act received the requisite concurrence of the members, and was duly attested by the presiding officer of each house; audit has also been duly enrolled and filed in the office of the secretary of state, and published iii the laws of Ohio. The journals of the legislature, the office of the secretary of state, and the published laws, show this; of all which, we take judicial notice.

Counsel have exhibited unusual industry in looking up the various cases upon this question; and, out of a multitude of citations, not one is found in which any court has assumed to go beyond the proceedings of the legislature, as recorded in the journals required to be kept in each of its branches, on the question whether a law had been adopted.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
44 Ohio St. (N.S.) 348, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-herron-v-smith-ohio-1886.