Court Opinion

ID: 9567113
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:48:57.985804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:57:34.863637
License: Public Domain

ELLETT, Justice
(dissenting).
The respondents are taxpayers of Salt Lake County, Utah; the defendants are the elected officials of the same county. W. Sterling Evans is the county clerk, and as such is ex officio clerk of the district courts and of the justice courts within his county. It is his duty to employ deputy clerks to serve the judges and the justices of the peace.
In connection with his duties to see that each court has a clerk, he appointed, for some of the justices of the peace, persons who were related to them. The respondents filed this action seeking a declaratory judgment preventing certain enumerated relatives from serving as clerks in the justices’ courts.
The trial court granted summary judgment wherein he held that a person related within the proscribed relationship to a justice of the peace could not serve as clerk in his court. He based his decision upon Arti*329cle VIII, Section 15 of the Utah Constitution which is as follows:
No person related to any judge of any court by affinity or consanguinity within the degree of first cousin, shall be appointed by such court or judge to, or employed by such court or judge in any office or duty in any court of which such judge may be a member. [Emphasis added.]
The decision was also based on Section 52—3—1, U.C.A. 1953, Replacement Vol. 5B, which reads:
It is unlawful for any person holding any position the compensation for which is paid out of public funds to employ, appoint, or vote for the appointment of, his or her father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, first cousin, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, or- daughter-in-law in or to any position or employment, when the salary, wages, pay, or compensation of such appointee is to be paid out of any public funds. . . . [Emphasis added.]
A constable serves the justice of the peace in his precinct and may appoint deputies by and with the consent of the Board of County Commissioners.1 There is nothing to prevent his appointing a relative of the justice of the peace as a deputy constable, nor to prevent that deputy from serving in the justices’ court. It contravenes the statute only when the constable appoints his own relatives as deputies. It contravenes the constitution only when the justice appoints his own relatives.
In this case, the justice of the peace has neither appointed nor voted for a clerk who serves in his court. Nor has W. Sterling Evans appointed one of his own relatives to a position as deputy clerk.
The trial court misinterpreted the meaning of the statute and the constitution in his ruling. The judgment should be therefore reversed.
Since the respondents brought this suit in the interest of the public and not for any gain unto themselves, no costs should be awarded.
CROCKETT, J., concurs in the views expressed in the dissenting opinion of EL-LETT, J.

. Section 17-16-7, U.C.A. 1953.