Title: Miller v. City of Evansville
Citation: 219 N.E.2d 900, 247 Ind. 563
Docket Number: 30,501
State: Indiana
Issuer: Indiana Supreme Court
Date: September 27, 1966

247 Ind. 563 (1966)
219 N.E.2d 900
MILLER ET AL.
v.
CITY OF EVANSVILLE ET AL.
No. 30,501.

Supreme Court of Indiana.
Filed September 27, 1966.
*564 James D. Lopp, of Evansville, for appellant.
Jerome L. Salm, Robert S. Matthews, David M. Keck, and James W. Angermeier, of Evansville, for appellees.
JACKSON, J.
This is an appeal from the denial of an injunction sought by appellants in a taxpayers action for the purpose of restraining defendants-appellees from placing in the water supply of the City of Evansville, Indiana, fluorides which appellants contend would produce irreparable injury and would further be a violation of their constitutional rights as guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the State of Indiana.
The issues were formed by the complaint in twenty-eight rhetorical paragraphs, the supplemental complaint and the answers to the original and supplemental complaints.
Appellants' Assignment of Errors is the single specification that "[t]he Court erred in overruling appellants' Motion for a New Trial."
The evidence of the witnesses produced at the trial, pro and con, is quite voluminous and in the opinion of the writer need not be set out, or even commented on at length as there *565 is a diversity of opinion as to the necessity or efficacy of the proposed fluoridation. The proponents urging the medical desirability thereof in the treatment of dental caries in that portion of the populace between the ages of six and twelve; the opponents thereof urging the deleterious effect of such treatment on the aged and ill, the violation of constitutional rights and religious freedom. The parties have, by stipulation, fixed boundaries and limitations we need not exceed.
Such stipulation contained the following paragraph:
The status relative to the general powers of cities and towns that are applicable to the case at bar are as follows:
It is quite clear and beyond question that the powers and duties devolving upon municipalities pursuant to the appropriate statutes provide for the exercise of the police powers necessary for the development, operation and continued functioning of the municipality.
In the case at bar only the common council of the City of Evansville, Indiana, possessed the power, under appropriate proceedings, to enact the ordinance or ordinances providing for the fluoridation of the city water provided by appellee city. The stipulation entered into *567 shows conclusively that the common council of the City of Evansville has not exercised this power and consequently no authority exists by which fluoridation can be instituted.
This cause is reversed and remanded with instructions to sustain appellants' Motion for New Trial and for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Myers, J., concurs. Arterburn, J., concurs in result. Rakestraw, C.J. and Achor, J., not participating.
NOTE.  Reported in 219 N.E.2d 900.