Opinion ID: 1889587
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Attorneys' Affidavits

Text: The manner in which primary elections may be contested is controlled by the Corrupt Practices Act, Miss. Code Ann. § 23-3-1 et seq. (1972). Section 23-3-45 dictates the procedures that are to be followed when an unsuccessful candidate wants to appeal the result of an election to a court. This section sets out the proper form that a petition for review should follow and, in relevant part, it provides: But such petition for judicial review shall not be filed unless it bear the certificate of two practicing attorneys that they and each of them have fully made an independent investigation into the matters of fact and of law upon which the protest and petition are based and that after such investigation, they verily believe that the said protest and petition should be sustained and that the relief therein prayed should be granted. Miss. Code Ann. § 23-3-45 (1972). In this case, the affidavits failed to state that the attorneys' investigations had been independent. The question then, is whether this defect is fatal to the contest. Pittman v. Forbes, 186 Miss. 783, 191 So. 490 (1939) held that the reason the affidavits were required was to prevent persons declared party nominees from being harassed with trivial applications for judicial review thereof, and contemplates, as the word `independent' connotes, a certificate by lawyers who are without bias or prejudice. 186 Miss. at 789, 191 So. at 490 . In Harris v. Stewart, 187 Miss. 489, 193 So. 339 (1940), this Court reemphasized the limited purpose stated above, that the attorneys' affidavits are to serve. Harris held that the only valid reasons which might disqualify an attorney's affidavit were reasons that would disqualify a judge from hearing a case. It was said of the statute: Every practicing attorney in the state was made a quasi-judicial officer to determine whether a proposed judicial hearing upon a primary election contest should be allowed and until the quoted statutory certificate is obtained from two of them, no such contest shall be instituted in the courts. And being quasi-judicial officers in respect to such an investigation, only that which would disqualify a judge would disqualify the certifying attorney and a collateral inquiry as to how he made his investigation or how fully he made it can no more be permitted than it could be questioned of a judge that he had failed to attend to the evidence and had not studied the law applicable to the case. 187 Miss. at 506, 193 So. at 343. Walker argues that in light of Harris, if the statute were read so as not to require an allegation that the investigation were independent, it would render the provision meaningless, since one is not allowed to make substantive challenges to the independence of the examination or lack thereof. However, nothing in Harris or any other case prevents inquiry into the actual biases of an attorney such as would disqualify him under the Harris standard. For this reason, the chancellor was correct in refusing to dismiss the complaint on the ground that no allegations of bias or prejudice had been made. The challenge Walker makes against the two attorneys' affidavits is one going to the fullness of the investigation that had been conducted. This is the sort of inquiry proscribed by Harris.