Court Opinion

ID: 9865051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:21:49.244603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:36:59.970521
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Burke
concurring specially.
In my opinion no justiciable question is presented by this record. There is no pretense of an issue raised by regular procedure. The action masquerades as one for a declaratory judgment under sections 78 to 92, chapter 93, ’35 C.S.A. The only applicable portion thereof provides for such a procedure “to declare rights, status, and other legal relations * * * in which a judgment or decree will terminate the. controversy or remove an uncertainty. * * * All persons shall be made parties who have or claim any interest which would be affected by the declaration.”
When this action was started the ordinance had been passed but no “associate municipal judges” had been appointed. The parties are the city auditor, the city, and the mayor. The questions presented, it is said, *277are propounded by the auditor, i.e., May the mayor, under his authority to fill vacancies, require an associate municipal judge to act as a justice, and if so, can the auditor approve his pay at $3,000 per annum? This is, on its face, absurd. Whether the mayor can so order is no concern of the auditor. Under the ordinance the mayor can appoint associate municipal judges. If he does so their pay is fixed by the ordinance and the auditor must allow it. No one questions or could question this. Whether they act as justices or not is¡ as to their salaries, wholly immaterial.
Assuming now that it is the mayor who wishes enlightenment. If the work is too heavy for two justices the mayor can appoint others. If his authority to require municipal judges to act as justices rests upon his power to fill vacancies it is self-evident it cannot exist because he-can fill those vacancies as easily as he can make the order. They exist, if at all, simply because of his neglect to perform his duty; hence the emergency which it is pretended justifies a violation of Constitution or charter, or their amendment by ordinance, is no emergency, since it can be removed in five minutes. Moreover, when this suit was heard below there were no vacancies, so far as the record discloses there might never be, and so far as the law permits there could never be. Hence even under the ordinance the mayor could never, while vacancies created by the mayor’s failure to act existed, assign the duties of justice to an associate municipal judge. It thus conclusively appears that. no right, status, or other legal relation is here presented for adjudication. No person holding or claiming the office of justice or that of associate municipal judge is here, and no one whose rights have been or may be prejudiced by an associate municipal judge acting as justice is here. Hence, if a controversy exists, no pronouncement here can legally terminate it. It thus appears that the facts furnish no support for this or any other kind of action. It is, on its face, a fictitious pro*278ceeding. But we are told that this objection is not raised. What of it? Must this court sit to adjudicate every street squabble about what the law might be if the impossible happened simply because the disputants so stipulate?
So much for the record. But what of the known facts? Courts take judicial notice of matters of common knowledge and the following facts are generally known throughout the city and state. — Denver had two justices. They were overworked and inadequately paid. Amendment of the city charter provided a slow, burdensome and doubtful remedy. So the council passed an ordinance, the justices resigned, the mayor appointed them as associate municipal judges, leaving their former offices unfilled, all before this cause came to us. Even were we forbidden to know what all interested persons of intelligence know, these facts have been brought home to us judicially. They were frankly stated by counsel in oral argument before this tribunal, in open court, with the observation that his opponents would not deny them, and they did not. So they stand admitted and, if material, and they are vital, they are a part of this record. A logical statement of the problem presented below, if any such was presented, is, If the justices resign and are appointed municipal judges may the mayor then, under a pretense of a valid vacancy in the office of justice, assign its duties to a municipal judge? But the justices have since resigned and have been appointed municipal judges and are unquestionably entitled to their pay as such. It follows that if this ever was a case it is now moot. If not, still the dispute, if any, disclosed by the record, is not the dispute, if any, which now exists; and the dispute, if any, which now exists does not appear from the record. However, assuming that the questions resolved by the court’s opinion are properly raised here, as the court has now held, I concur in that resolution.
The cause should be dismissed at plaintiff’s costs.