Court Opinion

ID: 9834366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:31:24.304604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:14.187459
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
A large part of the motion of appellees is devoted to an argument which amounts to a request that this court shall set aside a statute that is so plain that it would be a reflection upon the intelligence of any one holding an office to intimate that he could not understand it, and to set up in its stead.a course of. conduct adopted by the commissioners’ court and the treasurer of the county, which was directly in the face of the statute. Article 1509 is plain and unequivocal in its terms, and they are so easy to be obeyed that no treasurer should ever deviate therefrom. It provides that—
“The county treasurer shall not pay any money out of the county treasury except in pursuance of a certificate or warrant from some officer authorized by law to issue the same.”
This court cannot add to or subtract one thing from that law, and the treasurer, having time and again violated its provisions, must take the consequences.
No attempt was made to prove that the commissioners’ court had passed directly on payments made by the treasurer. There was no evidence tending to show that, when money was paid out by the treasurer without a warrant or certificate, the commissioners’ court recognized the validity of such payment and endeavored to legalize it, if such could be done. If by custom, or even by formal action, a commissioners’ court can nullify an act of the Legislature, laws passed to protect the finances of a county from being expended in an unlawful manner then become farcical, and it is worse than folly for such laws to be passed.
The reports approved by the commissioners’ court do not show that any money had been expended without warrants issued in compliance with the -statute, and there is nothing to indicate that the court had any knowledge of any such expenditure.
The contention that the treasurer “complied with the requirements of the law and made his reports to the commissioners’ court at each term, accompanied by proper vouchers,” is not borne out by the record. The treasurer in effect admitted a shortage in his accounts.
In the cases of Walker v. Barnard, 8 Tex. Civ. App. 14, 27 S. W. 726, and Denman v. Coffee, 42 Tex. Civ. App. 78, 91 S. W. 800, it was explicitly held that an order of the commissioners’ court cannot take the place of the certificate or warrant prescribed in the statute, and yet it is contended by appellees that the orders of an individual commissioner can set aside the statute. There is no merit in the motion, of appellants, and it is overruled.
A motion by appellants seeks ’an explicit ruling on the sixth and seventh assignments, which were overruled by this court. They were overruled, because the court was of opinion that the law appropriate to the case had been given by the court, and that the issues submitted would not have been improved by giving the issues requested.