Court Opinion

ID: 9688417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 17:46:31.409341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:38.510540
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting).
It is always with the greatest diffidence and reluctance that I venture to disagree with the collective learning and wisdom of my confreres, but sometimes I do dissent, and it is with respect and deference that 1 do so in this case, and am impelled to explain my views.
The controlling opinion correctly sets out the facts in the record of the case at bar, and it is unnecessary for me to repeat them. However, I think this matter is controlled by the case of Harvey et al. v. Covington County, 161 Miss. 765, 138 So. 403.
In that case, this Court held that the validity of outstanding warrants of the county cannot be adjudicated by the chancellor in county bond validation proceedings, since such objections constituted collateral attacks on the judgment of the board of supervisors. Section 5977, Code 1930, now Section 4319, Code 1942. This statute empowered and required every county and municipality having legal and undisputed outstanding warrants or other obligations, and insufficient funds in the treasury to pay them or any of them, “to at once prepare for, and take up such warrants and other obligations from the proceeds of serial bonds which shall be issued for such purpose, as is provided by law for issuance of bonds for the payment of oustanding obligations. Such bonds to pay such outstanding obligations shall be issued regardless of the amount thereof, and no election shall be held on the question of the issuance of such bonds. . . . the prompt issuance of sufficient bonds to pay all of such legal and undisputed warrants or other obligations is made mandatory on such counties and municipalities. ’ ’
*474It will be noted that since an election was prohibited, the procedure for the issuance of the bonds required no notice of their issuance, and none was, therefore, given. However, objectors could have appeared before the board of supervisors and challenged in a contest that such warrants and other obligations were legal or undisputed or outstanding and that there was not sufficient money in the treasury to pay them, or any other appropriate lawful objection. This Court has held that one other such objection may be based on the rule that the board of supervisors, in such a case, must find as a jurisdictional fact that such bonds, when added to a district’s outstanding bonded indebtedness, would not exceed ten per cent of assessed valuation of taxable property therein, and set forth such facts in its order before bonds could be validly issued or validated. Brown et al. v. Board of Supervisors of Simpson County, 185 Miss. 216, 187 So. 738.
In the Harvey v. Covington County case, supra, the board of supervisors expressly adjudicated the necessary jurisdictional facts, and there was no notice to anyone, and no contest before the board.
Thereafter, validation proceedings were instituted under Chapter 10, Code 1930, now Chapter 1, Title 18, Code 1942. On the date in the notice of such proceeding setting for hearing the validation proceedings, objections were filed which denied ‘ ‘ the truth or existence of the various facts adjudicated by the board of supervisors, and challenging the validity of most of the items . . .”. Objection was made to the evidence offered by the opponents of the validation, which were sustained by the court. A motion was then made by the proponents to dismiss the objections because they set forth no legal grounds, which, if true, would give the chancery court jurisdiction to inquire into them; that each allowance in the list of warrants and outstanding obligations had been adjudicated by the board of supervisors; and that each claim had also been adjudicated by the board to be legal, outstand*475ing, and undisputed obligation against the county; that no appeal had been taken from that order; ‘ ‘ and that the chancery court was without jurisdiction;’•’ that the only remedy was by appeal to the circuit court, and that issues sought to be thus tried in the validation proceedings were collateral attacks on the orders of the board of supervisors, and, therefore, were not germane to the issue to be tried in the validation proceedings. The court .sustained this motion to strike, and validated the bonds, and from that decree the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which affirmed it. To the opinion were cited Choctaw County v. Tennison et al., 161 Miss. 66, 134 So. 900; Board of Supervisors of Prentiss County for Booneville and Burton Good Roads District v Holley et al., 141 Miss. 432, 106 So. 644, 645; Green et al. v. Hutson et al., 139 Miss. 471, 104 So. 171; Johnson et al. v Board of Supervisors of Yazoo County et al., 113 Miss. 435, 74 So. 321; and in these eases, were cited also Wilson v. Wallace, 64 Miss. 13, 8 So. 128; Ferguson et al. v. Board of Supervisors of Monroe County, 71 Miss. 524, 14 So. 81; Deberry v. President, etc. Town of Holly Springs, 35 Miss. 385; Borroum et al. v. Purdy Road District, 131 Miss. 778, 95 So. 677.
The Court, in the case I am discussing said [161 Miss. 765, 138 So. 404]: “The uncertainty as to whether the validity of the items of alleged outstanding warrants and obligations may be challenged and again adjudicated by the chancellor in a validation proceeding seems to have its foundation in the provision of Section 313, Code 1930, (now Section 4314, Code 1942) that upon the hearing of a validation proceeding, the chancellor ‘may hear additional competent, relevant and material evidence under the rules applicable to such evidence in the chancery court, so as to inquire into the validity of the bonds or other obligations proposed to be issued, and enter a decree in accordance with his finding.’ ”
This Court ruled against the offered evidence, as shown ante, citing the cases listed. It also said: “Section 61, *476Code 1930, provides that any person aggrieved by any judgment or decision of the board of supervisors may appeal from such order to the next term of circuit court. In the ease of Deberry v. President, etc., of Town of Holly Springs, 35 Miss. 385, it was held that under this statute it was not necessary that the aggrieved party desiring to appeal from an order of the board should be a party to the record, while in the case of Wilson v. Wallace, 64 Miss. 13, 8 So. 128, and Ferguson v. Board of Supervisors of Monroe County, 71 Miss. 524, 14 So. 81, it was held that any taxpayer may appeal from judgments or decisions of the board of supervisors. ’ ’
The case of Green v. Hutson, supra, was a bond validation proceeding wherein attack was sought to be made upon an adjudication of the board of supervisors that twenty per cent of the electors did not protest against the issuance of the bonds, and the court refused to hear it, holding that it was a collateral attack on the validity of the bonds. In the case at bar, it was sought to prove that the adjudication by the board of supervisors that a. majority of the electors signed the petition was untrue, and in my judgment it was an attempted collateral attack, and the chancellor correctly rejected it. The citation of the Green case involving an election with notice as authority to support the Court’s conclusion in a case without an election and notice seems to me a clear indication that the Supreme Court was of the opinion that the same principles as to collateral attack applied equally to both types of cases, and hence would apply to the case at bar. In discussing the case of Johnson v. Board of Supervisors of Yazoo County, supra, the Court said in the Harvey v. Covington County case: ‘ ‘ Where the order of the board of supervisors ordering the issuance of highway construction bonds, shows the jurisdictional facts, on its face, its judgment has all the effect of a valid judgment of a court of general jurisdiction, and can only be questioned by a direct proceeding by appeal or certiorari to the circuit court . . . but the *477chancery court has no such jurisdiction and when the records show jurisdiction in the board of supervisors to pass an order, chancery cannot question the validity of the proceedings. ’ ’
Finally, in the Harvey v. Covington County case, the opinion of the Supreme Court declared: “The objectors had the right of appeal from this order, but failed to avail themselves of this right. The objections sought to be interposed in the validation proceeding constituted collateral attacks on the validity of the final judgment of the board of supervisors that the listed claims and obligations were properly payable by the proposed issue of bonds, and the action of the court below in sustaining objections to the evidence offered in support of the objections to the issuance of the bonds, and in sustaining the motion to strike such objections, was correct.” The Covington County case was later reaffirmed in Hegwood et al. v. Board of Supervisors of Smith County, Miss., 140 So. 223, and cited with approval in Brown v. Board of Supervisors of Simpson County, 185 Miss. 216, 187 So. 738.
It is to be remembered that in Covington County case, supra, there was no notice; and that in the case at bar there was no notice. It is also to be remembered that one aggrieved by the order of the board need not have been a party to the record, and that any taxpayer may appeal. This was not done in the case at bar, and in my judgment, an effort to prove that a majority had not petitioned for the bond issue in the instant case is a factual issue adjudged to the contrary by the board of supervisors, just as was the factual issue of the validity, and lack of dispute, and correctness of the warrants and obligations in the Covington County case where there was no notice or appeal as in the case at bar. They weré both attacks upon the final adjudication of facts by the board with jurisdiction, whose judgment had all of the force of that of a court of general jurisdiction, and were collateral attacks, and not permissible. I *478think the Chancellor was correct, and the decree should be affirmed.
No constitutional question was raised in the case at bar, either in the trial court, or by any assignment of error in this Court. Due process is satisfied by our decisions, to which reference is made ante, it seems to me, which point out that one need not be a party to the record in the court of the board of supervisors in order to appeal, and that any aggrieved citizen or taxpayer may appeal to the circuit court, or that the matter may be taken to that court by certiorari. The controlling opinion, deferentially, in my judgment, overrules the cases hereinbefore cited, without any justifiable basisi that they are wrong in principle or mischievous in effect.
My dissent is, however, only from that part of the controlling opinion which puts justification on its constitutional views and which authorizes rehearing by the chancery court of the evidence already adjudicated by the board of supervisors, for the reason that it constitutes a collateral attack upon the board’s judgment. As stated above, I think the decree of the Chancellor should be affirmed.