Case ID: njl_43/html/0358-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Dixon, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

STATE, ALBERT I. BOGERT ET AL., PROSECUTORS, v. TRUSTEES OF SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 30, IN THE COUNTY OF BERGEN.
    Special meetings of the voters of a school district must be called by the hoard of trustees regularly convened.
    On certiorari.
    
    Argued at February Term, 1881, before Justices Dixon, Reed and Parker.
    For the prosecutors, W. M. Johnson.
    
    For the defendants, A. D. Campbell.
    
   The opinion of the court was delivered by

Dixon, J.

Resolutions passed at a special meeting of the voters of the district are brought up for review. It is admitted that no meeting of the board of trustees was held at which the subject of holding the special meeting was considered or voted upon, and that said special meeting was not ordered or authorized by the full board of trustees, but that two of the trustees met, without notice to the other trustee, and in his absence decided to call the meeting, and thereupon signed the call, which afterwards the other trustee, on request, refused to sign.

The board of trustees is authorized to call special meetings of the votei’s only when, in the judgment of the trustees, the interests of the school require it. The action of the trustees, therefore, is judicial in its nature, and can be lawfully exercised only when the board is regularly convened. Townsend v. School Trustees, 12 Vroom 312.

The call, therefore, was illegally made, and the action of the special meeting must be annulled.