Court Opinion

ID: 9811065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:07:14.652244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:25.420852
License: Public Domain

Smith, C. J.,
dissenting. I do not feel at liberty to put a construction on the act of 1874r-’75, the first section of which, without the proviso, is introduced into The Code, § 756, that extends its operation to the facts of the present case. It was. passed to meet an emergency in the financial affairs of the municipal bodies brought about by the late civil war and its results in their disturbed condition; and its essential purpose, as declared in the title, was to ascertain their true and real indebtedness by furnishing an opportunity of separating therefrom the illegal and spurious which were outstanding. Substantially it is thus declared in Wharton v. Commissioners of Currituck, cited in the opinion of the other members of the Court.
In terms it does not embrace the asserted demand of the plaintiff. The debt for the payment of which the order issued had been presented to the board and its correctness recognized, and the order was but a direction to the proper officer to pay it. It was therefore, as the statute required, presented and passed on favorably. Why should the debt be presented again after this action on the part of the board ? Certainly *154the intention cannot be reasonably imputed to the General Assembly of requiring a renewed presentation of a claim already adjudicated after its maturity, and so toties quoties, for every succeeding two years, under the penalty of forfeiture, when the delay in the payment was caused by the county treasurer. The statute, upon a fair construction of its terms and its obvious purposes, excludes, in my opinion, the plaintiff’s demand thus already ascertained and adjudged from the requirements, and this too in the absence of any suggestion of unfair practice in bringing about the allowance of the claim, or other reason for a re-examination of the debt itself.
No error. Affirmed.