Court Opinion

ID: 7967944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 00:52:23.050402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:34:41.863574
License: Public Domain

Gilfillan, C. J.
This is an action to recover money which belonged to plaintiff, and which its city council paid or caused to be paid to defendants upon a contract between said council and them, according to the terms of which it was agreed that they should establish and operate for a specified period a shoe factory in the city of Chaska, and in consideration thereof the city should pay them the sum of $5,000. It is conceded that the contract was invalid; that it was beyond the power of the corporation, and, a fortiori, of any officer of the corporation, to make such a contract. It would be hard to conceive anything more foreign to the purposes of a municipal corporation than contracts which provide for the appriation of public moneys to be derived from taxation to the private uses of individuals.
■ But it is claimed that, conceding all this, the plaintiff cannot recover the money paid on the contract, because the payment was voluntarily made, and with full knowledge of all the facts. As a general rule, when an individual or private corporation pays money voluntarily with full knowledge of the facts, and without fraud or mistake, it cannot be recovered back, though there was no obligation to pay. To give such effect to the payment, however, it must be the act of the individual or corporation; and in this case the payment was not the act of the corporation. It had no authority to make it; no one of its officers, nor all of them together, had authority to make it. The case stands in law as it would had some person, not connected with the city government, taken the money from its treasury, and paid it to defendants. It may be different in a case where the payment is for a legitimate purpose, within the power conferred on the municipal corporation, and is made by an officer, or upon the direction of an officer, who has authority to determine whether some condition precedent to the authority of the paying officer to pay has been complied with. As the corporation had no authority to pay the money, the payment was not a corporate act, and consequently there is no basis for the doctrine of voluntary payment.
On the motion to change the venue to Bamsey county the affidavits as to the defendant Hedman’s residence, whether in the county *528of Carver or Ramsey, were conflicting, with little preponderance either way, and the finding of the court below on the fact is conclusive.
Judgment affirmed.
Vanderburgh, J., took no part in the case.
(Opinion published 55 N. W. Rep. 737.)