Case ID: liquor-tax-rep_2/html/0357-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "White, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Supreme Court, Chautauqua Special Term,
    July, 1900.
    Reported, 32 Misc. 131.
    The People ex rel. Oscar C. Wood, Relator, v. The Board of Town Canvassers, etc., of the Town of Randolph, Respondents.
    Liquor Tax Law—Local option—Errors of biennial town meeting cured by action of special town meeting—Mandamus".
    Where a special town meeting has duly and regularly passed upon the question of local option, errors committed in the submission of those questions to a prior biennial town meeting may he deemed to have been rectified, and, therefore, the court will not compel the hoard of canvassers to reconvene and reject the local option ballots which were cast at the biennial town meeting.
    
      This is an application for a writ of peremptory mandamus requiring the respondents to reconvene and reject all ballots cast by the electors of the town of Randolph at the election of 1899 upon the subject of local option in said town.
    
      Wentworth & Wentworth and Norman M. Allen, for relator.
    
      Benjamin F. Gongdon, for respondents.
   White, J.

The moving papers and the affidavits filed on behalf of the respondents show that the electors of the town of Randolph voted upon the local option questions provided for by the Liquor Tax Law, at the biennial town meeting in 1899; that those questions were not at that meeting submitted to or voted upon by said electors in the manner prescribed by law, and the result thereof may be assumed to have been void.

Because of the recognized irregularities in the first submission of the questions, a special town meeting was duly called and held on May 1, 1900, at which said questions were regularly submitted and voted upon and the result thereof declared according to law.

It seems clear to me that the electors, having remedied such irregularities in the manner prescribed by the statute, no effect is to be given to, the irregular votes at the regular meeting in 1899, nor to the result of that meeting as declared, and for that reason the motion for the writ of mandamus should be denied, with ten dollars costs to the respondents.

Motion denied, with ten dollars costs to respondents.