Case Name: Jimmy SMITH, Daniel Jennings, Calvin C. Williams and Bennie Knox v. Reverend James DORSEY, John E. Walls, Jr., Carl R. Brandon, Gussie P. Wilson, Harriet Aikerson, Roosevelt Yarbrough, State of Mississippi, ex rel. Edwin Lloyd Pittman, Attorney General and the Mississippi Ethics Commission
Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Mississippi
Decision Date: 1988-03-16
Citations: 530 So. 2d 5
Docket Number: No. 58288
Parties: Jimmy SMITH, Daniel Jennings, Calvin C. Williams and Bennie Knox v. Reverend James DORSEY, John E. Walls, Jr., Carl R. Brandon, Gussie P. Wilson, Harriet Aikerson, Roosevelt Yarbrough, State of Mississippi, ex rel. Edwin Lloyd Pittman, Attorney General and the Mississippi Ethics Commission.
Judges: ROY NOBLE LEE, C.J., HAWKINS and DAN M. LEE, P.JJ., and ANDERSON, J., concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 530
Pages: 5–18

Head Matter:
Jimmy SMITH, Daniel Jennings, Calvin C. Williams and Bennie Knox v. Reverend James DORSEY, John E. Walls, Jr., Carl R. Brandon, Gussie P. Wilson, Harriet Aikerson, Roosevelt Yarbrough, State of Mississippi, ex rel. Edwin Lloyd Pittman, Attorney General and the Mississippi Ethics Commission.
No. 58288.
Supreme Court of Mississippi.
March 16, 1988.
As Modified on Denial of Rehearing Aug. 3, 1988.
Kennie E. Middleton, Fayette, for appellants.
Edwin Lloyd Pittman and Mike Moore, Attys. Gen. by Suzanne M. Smith, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellees.

Opinion:
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
GRIFFIN, Justice,
for the Court:
The opinion released March 16, 1988 is modified. The following is now the official opinion of the Court.
The Reverend James Dorsey, John E. Walls, Jr., Carl L. Brandon, Gussie P. Wilson, Harriet Aikerson, Individually and as Taxpayers of Claiborne County, Mississippi, and Roosevelt Yarbrough, Individually and as a Taxpayer of Claiborne County, Mississippi, and as a member of the Board of the Claiborne County School District, brought an action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in the Claiborne County Chancery Court against Jimmy Smith, Daniel Jennings, Calvin C. Williams and Bennie Knox, remaining members of the Claiborne County School Board, for their conduct allegedly in violation of Section 109 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890. The State through Edwin Lloyd Pittman, Attorney General, and the Ethics Commission joined the action by way of invitation from these plaintiffs. The final decree of the lower court found the defendants in violation of Section 109, and defendants appeal here.
In this appeal this Court is asked to construe Section 109 as applied to contracts of teachers whose spouses are school board members. Stated differently, may a local school board contract with the spouses of its members?
In Frazier v. State by and through Pittman, 504 So.2d 675 (Miss.1987), we held that as between a legislator and spouse as a public school teacher, no such conflict of interest exists. We held that Section 109 was never intended to prohibit any individual from serving in the legislature and voting on general public school laws and appropriations therefor simply because his or her spouse is employed as a public school teacher in this state.
Here we have a different factual situation, requiring another answer, therefore, we affirm the order of the chancery court as to defendants Jimmy Smith, Daniel Jennings, Calvin C. Williams, and Bennie Knox, finding that each of the defendants has been and is in violation of Section 109; declaring null and void all contracts between defendants' spouses and the Claiborne County School District; and enjoining the payment of any further salaries or payments of money to these spouses while the defendants are members of the Claiborne County Board of Education and for a period of one year after defendants shall leave said official capacities.
We reverse as to the chancellor's order requiring restitution from the defendants for compensation received in violation of Section 109.
FACTS
Proceedings in the lower court were held on October 9, 1986. Testimony at trial and stipulated exhibits include documents issued to defendants by the Secretary of State certifying them as Claiborne County School Board members; contracts for employment for their spouses — Jo Anne Collins Smith, Mary Jennings, Ernestine Williams and Catherine Knox — as teachers in the Claiborne County School District, at the time defendants served as board members; the teachers' payroll records from 1980 — 1986; and minutes of the Claiborne County School Board from 1980 — 1986.
On direct examination Dr. John Noble, the Claiborne County Superintendent of Education, stated that, following his recommendations of applicants for teaching positions within the district, the Claiborne County School Board had the authority to reach contracts of employment with these prospective teachers. The salaries for these teachers come from two separate sources, local funds and the State Minimum Program Fund. The contracts for employment contain within them the salary to be paid to the individual, as approved by the Board.
On October 10, 1986, the chancellor entered an order finding all defendants to be in violation of Section 109. He further adjudicated the defendants' spouses' contracts to be null and void, and that each defendant had an indirect interest in these contracts as he had been a Trustee of the Claiborne County Board of Education when said Board approved one or more contracts for the employment of the defendants' spouses.
Finally, the chancellor ordered claims of restitution be made against the spouses of the defendants because of the Section 109 violations. The Court found that these violations as to all defendants and their spouses had existed for several years up to and including the present date.
This appeal followed.
LAW
Article 4, Section 109 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 provides:
No public officer or member of the legislature shall be interested, directly or indirectly, in any contract with the state, or any district, county, city or town thereof, authorized by any law passed or order made by any board of which he may be or may have been a member, during the term for which he shall have been chosen, or within one year after the expiration of such term.
In Frazier, supra, at 693, we said that this section prohibits any officer from:
(a) having any direct or indirect interest in any contract
(b) with the state or any political subdivision
(c) executed during his term of office or one year thereafter, and
(d) authorized by any law, or order of any board of which he was a member.
We noted that while there is no difficulty in ascertaining (b) and (c), and while (a) and (d) have not always been so clear-cut, the answer "usually [being] simple, . it is (a) and (d) where the gray areas are encountered." Id.
The chancellor found that each defendant had an indirect interest in his spouse's contract as prohibited by Section 109. We would agree.
In Frazier, supra, at 698, we declined to go so far as to hold that the rational purpose and intent of the 1890 constitution prohibited James Nunnally, appellant therein, from running for the legislature and serving as a member of that governmental branch, which voted on several public school laws at the time when his wife, Betty Jo Nunnally, was employed as a public school teacher in this state.
Whatever might be said of the logic supporting the contention that Sec. 109 was violated because (1) Mr. Nunnally was in the Legislature, (2) which passed a law authorizing his wife's public school employment contract (3) in which he manifestly had some interest, it simply defies practical wisdom to carry this section to such an extreme. As Justice Brandéis once observed, "the logic of words should yield to the logic of realities." DiSanto v. Pennsylvania, 273 U.S. 34, 43, 47 S.Ct. 267 [270], 71 L.Ed. 524, 529 (1927).
Id.
However, without hesitation we find that logic dictates some manifest interest by appellants herein in the public school employment contracts of their wives. Appellants are directly responsible for the hiring and firing of their spouses. Additionally, the record indicates that these school board members share fully in the process behind which the salaries are awarded to public school teachers in their district. This is not to say that we question the integrity or fairness of these board members in any way; we simply recognize that each has an indirect interest in his wife's contract which violates the constitutional provision.
In Frazier, this Court said the following:
We hold that where a portion of the salaries derived by public school teachers under their teaching contracts comes from discretionary local tax levies, a teacher cannot make a valid contract with a school district while he is on the board of the governing authority which makes such tax levies, or within one year after his term on the governing board expires. Such a contract violates Sec. 109.
It therefore follows that insofar as Miss. Code Ann. § 25-4-105(3)(h) attempts to make an exception and authorize such a contract, it is at cross purposes with See. 109 and unconstitutional.
As was aptly stated in Commonwealth v. Withers, 266 Ky. 29, 98 S.W.2d 24, 25 (1936):
It is a salutary doctrine that he who is intrusted with the business of others cannot be allowed to make such business as object of profit to himself. This is based upon principles of reason, of morality, and of public policy. These are principles of the common law and of equity which have been supplemented and made more emphatic by the foregoing and other statutory enactments. 504 So.2d at 700.
And while this interpretation of Sec. 109 addresses the situation in which a school board member votes his own salary out of discretionary local tax levies, no distinction can be made by his voting that of his wife — the interest therein is one and the same.
Next, we address the question of restitution ordered by the lower court and brought up on appeal.
In the trial below plaintiffs and appellees herein neither plead nor raised the question of any bad faith committed by appellants for their role in the employment of their spouses. Nor did the chancellor make any finding of such.
In our review of the record, we can see no allegation by these Claiborne County taxpayers that they did not receive value for services performed by the teachers, whose time of employment ranged from two (2) to thirty-three (33) years. Further, in at least one instance the record shows that a spouse of one board member had been teaching long before his election to that body.
We have no doubt that such circumstances involving husband and wife teams in which one teaches and the other serves as a member of the school board are commonplace across this state, with no thought to any wrong-doing by the parties involved.
In Golden v. Thompson, 194 Miss. 241, 11 So.2d 906 (1943), this Court declined to order restitution to the parties therein because
. a public official who, in the performance of his duty, acted in good faith reliance upon a statute before it had been declared unconstitutional by a Court should not be held civilly liable for the conduct authorized by such statute. The chancellor found no bad faith on the part of any of the defendants in their misplaced reliance on the condemned sections, and we cannot say he was manifestly wrong in such finding. On cross-appeal the chancery court judgment should be affirmed. Frazier, supra, at 704.
Although factually at odds with Golden (there is no statute upon which appellants herein in good faith relied upon as there was in Golden), we follow its rationale as the result reached in that case promotes the only equitable proposition available to the parties in the case at bar.
In Tideway Oil Programs, Inc. v. Serio, 431 So.2d 454 (Miss.1983), this Court, quoting the earlier case of Wilbom v. Balfour, held that:
A court of equity is a court of conscience, but not a forum of vengeance. It will make restitution but not reprisals. It will fill full the measure of compensation, but will not overflow it with vindictive damages. 218 Miss. 791 at 805, 67 So.2d 857 at 863 (1953).
We believe an award of restitution here amounts to nothing more than the granting of punitive damages, and absent a showing of bad faith, or even proof of loss, is improperly given.
In Griffith's Mississippi Chancery Practice, we find the following:
It is more than a trite phrase that the court of equity is a court of conscience; and it is immaterial what rights a party could assert in a court of law, — a court of equity will limit him to those rights of which he could conscientiously avail himself. It has been tersely expressed that nothing but conscience, good faith, and reasonable diligence can call forth the activities of a court of equity, and that when these requisites are wanting, the court is passive and does nothing. It makes no exertion to extend relief to those who, being able to take care of their interests, have neglected so to do, and thereupon find themselves in predicaments which ordinary care would have avoided. That "equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber," is one of its great maxims. Thus it is that an applicant may be barred out of equity by laches, that is to say, but such neglect and delay in asserting his rights as would make it inequitable to others to permit him at such a late day to assert them.
Griffith, Mississippi Chancery Practice (2d.Ed.) § 32 (1925). Cf. Suggs v. Town of Caledonia, 470 So.2d 1055 (Miss.1985); Covington County v. Page, 456 So.2d 739 (Miss.1984); State v. Stockett, 249 So.2d 388 (Miss.1971).
The record reflects that the conduct of the defendants here had been the general practice in Claiborne County for many years, and we would concede that a similar case could be made in many other counties of the state. The claim for restitution, however, should be denied on other grounds. There is no way the parties can be put back in their original position before the teaching contracts were entered. For restitution to be equitable, there would have to be some way of restoring to the teachers the value of the services they have rendered to the schools. Obviously, this cannot be done. To require restitution under the facts of this case would place these school teachers in a position where they would have served as public school teachers without pay, and in several instances for a number of years. The equitable remedy of restitution should not be enforced in such an inequitable way.
We hold that the above premise, coupled with the fact that there is no allegation or finding of bad faith on the part of the appellants, would make it grossly inequitable to require restitution on the peculiar facts presented here. This complies with our rationale announced in Frazier, supra, wherein we reasserted the rule announced in Golden v. Thompson, supra, wherein a public official was not liable where he acted in good faith in reliance upon an unconstitutional statute. We can find very little difference in the reliance upon an unconstitutional statute and prolonged acquiescence of the State, particularly when there is no allegation that the school district did not get what it bargained for, a good school teacher.
We, therefore, uphold the chancellor's order finding appellants herein have been and are in violation of Sec. 109; declaring the contracts of appellants's spouses to be null and void; and enjoining any further payment of salaries, etc. to said spouses while appellants remain as members of the Board of the Claiborne County School District and for a period of one year after the defendants shall leave their official capacities, however, as in Alexander v. State by and through Attain, 441 So.2d 1329 (Miss.1983), we do not invalidate contracts expiring in 1988. We reverse the chancellor's order of restitution.
There is one final point. The chancellor's decision was rendered October 10, 1986. The appeal was taken without supersedeas. The salaries of the teachers whose husbands are parties to this action have been withheld pursuant to the October 10, 1986 order. Since we are affirming that portion of the order which declares the contracts illegal, no funds should be paid to the teachers after October 10, 1986. The monies withheld should be returned to the general funds of the school district.
PETITION FOR REHEARING DENIED; OPINION MODIFIED; AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED AND RENDERED IN PART.
ROY NOBLE LEE, C.J., HAWKINS and DAN M. LEE, P.JJ., and ANDERSON, J., concur.
PRATHER, J., specially concurring by written opinion.
ROBERTSON, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part by written opinion.
SULLIVAN, J., dissenting by written opinion.
ZUCCARO, J., not participating.