State ex rel. McKay v. Board of Elections

115 N.E.2d 858, 65 Ohio Law. Abs. 547, 1953 Ohio App. LEXIS 896
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedApril 13, 1953
DocketNos. 2237, 2238, 2239 and 2240
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 115 N.E.2d 858 (State ex rel. McKay v. Board of Elections) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State ex rel. McKay v. Board of Elections, 115 N.E.2d 858, 65 Ohio Law. Abs. 547, 1953 Ohio App. LEXIS 896 (Ohio Ct. App. 1953).

Opinion

[549]*549OPINION

By THE COURT:

Case No. 2237 is an action in prohibition originating in this Court, upon which a writ was issued and thereafter modified. To this petition an answer has been filed, to which a demurrer has been interposed. Cases Nos. 2238, 2239 and 2240 are appeals on questions of law from judgments of the Common Pleas Court. Case No. 2240 was first presented separately from the other numbered cases. The other cases, including the action in prohibition, were argued together.

The arguments were extensive, and in the course thereof many cases were cited and discussed. In this opinion it is not our purpose to again consider in detail the subject matter which was the basis of Judge Crawford’s decisions in the Common Pleas Court, nor do we intend to comment on any considerable number of the many cases cited by counsel in briefs and oral argument. We do, however, want to give attention to the propositions that seem to be newly presented or especially emphasized in this Court, and others that have been urged by counsel for plaintiffs in the prohibition case, and in the cases in which plaintiff Monnier is the appellant.

We are in accord with the conclusions reached by Judge Crawford in the three cases upon which the appeals are prosecuted. We believe that he has correctly analyzed the sections of the statute and the provisions of the Constitution which control the questions presented.

In the declaratory judgment action, the plaintiff averred that the municipality of Kettering was a de facto city and should be so treated until it was a city de jure. Manifestly if this contention was supported by the judgment, the detachment proceedings, accomplished and prospective, would not have been effective. Those who opposed this contention nominally insisted that Kettering was a village and that the detachment proceedings, accomplished and prospective, were appropriate and authorized by statute. It may be that tnere was some suggestion of the unconstitutionality of the incorporation proceedings because the election approving the incorporation had as its effect the creation of a municipality which had a population in 1950, as determined by the Federal census of that year, of more than 22,000 persons.

It is singular that the trial judge did not, in his written opinion, devote any attention whatever to this contention, and is persuasive that it was not an issue. In the transcript of [550]*550the proceedings it does appear that the court recognized that there were three questions to be determined, namely: Whether Kettering was a city, a village or a township, and it was also stipulated that the status of Kettering should be determined upon plaintiffs’ allegations of fact appearing in their petition.

It is well established that a constitutional question may not be raised for the first time in a reviewing court. To be reviewed the question must have been raised and determined by the trial court. Thatcher v. The Pennsylvania, Ohio and Detroit Railroad Company, 121 Oh St 205; Stephenson v. State, 119 Oh St 349; Cincinnati v. Lindsay, 88 Oh Ap 117. And by this Court in Kuhn v. Wood, 34 Abs 265, 268; State v. Miller, 28 Abs 571, 576. See Vol. 2, O. Jur., Part 1, Sections 150, 502, pages 299, 896. We are of the opinion that the constitutional question interposed in this Court was not specifically raised or determined in the trial court.

It is urged that Article XVIII, Section 1, of the Ohio Constitution precludes the incorporation of Kettering as a village, which we do not pass upon. The section provides:

“Municipal corporations are hereby classified into cities and villages. All such corporations having a population of five thousand or over shall be cities; all others shall be villages. The method of transition from one class to the other shall be regulated by law.”

Pursuant to this classification and authorization the legislature enacted §3497 GC, which must be considered:

“Municipal corporations, which, at the last federal census, had a population of five thousand or more, shall be cities. All other municipal corporations shall be villages. Cities which, at any future federal census, have a population of less than five thousand shall become villages. Villages which, at any future federal census, have a population of five thousand or more, shall become cities.”

In Murray v. The State, ex rel. Nestor, 91 Oh St 220, our Supreme Court held (1) that Section 1 of Article XVIII of the Constitution, relating to the classification of municipal corporations, adopted September 3, 1912, is not self-executing and (2) §§3497, 3498 and 3499 GC, regulate the method of transition of municipal corporations from one class to the other and are not inconsistent with that constitutional provision, and (3) a municipal corporation which had a population of less than five thousand at the last federal census did not advance to a city when it was made to appear by an official census taken by the municipal corporation subsequently thereto that it had a population of more than five thousand.

The authority which promulgates the result of the federal census as it relates to the transition of municipal corporations [551]*551from villages to cities and vice versa is set up by §3498 GC. That is the only statutory provision defining the procedure to accomplish the transition contemplated by the Constitution.

In the act on incorporation of villages, §3516 to §3546 GC, inclusive, there are set up two methods of incorporation. The first, §3517 to §3525 GC, inclusive, being an application by petition to the county commissioners. Sec. 3519 GC provides what the petition shall include, among which is the requirement that it set forth “the supposed number of inhabitants residing in the proposed corporation,” and that at the hearing by the county commissioners provided for in the act, §3521 and §3522 GC, among the essentials to the order organizing a village is: “That there is the requisite population for the proposed corporation.”

The following sections in the chapter, §3526 GC, et seq., are those which were involved in the proceeding to incorporate Kettering. Sec. 3526 GC authorizes the petition to the township trustees for incorporation, and requires that the statement as to the population in the proposed municipality be made as in the petition under §3519 GC. But the procedure outlined in §3527 GC, and defining what the trustees shall determine respecting the petition, enjoins upon them the obligation only to find that the persons who signed the petition are electors, that they reside within the limits of the proposed incorporation, and that a majority of them are freeholders. Having so determined, they have no choice but to order a notice for the election by the qualified voters resident in the territory at the time fixed, to vote for or against the incorporation.

We conclude then, that there is no provision prior to election whereby determination can be properly made if the territory contemplated to be included in the proposed municipality may be incorporated as a village. If the question is to be reached it must be raised thereafter, as has been done in the instant case. The determinative factor, in our opinion, is found in the language of the statute, namely:

“Municipal corporations, which, at the last federal census, had a population of five thousand or more, shall be cities. All other municipal corporations shall be villages.

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Bluebook (online)
115 N.E.2d 858, 65 Ohio Law. Abs. 547, 1953 Ohio App. LEXIS 896, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-mckay-v-board-of-elections-ohioctapp-1953.