Court Opinion

ID: 9828107
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:06:09.693584+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:43.612597
License: Public Domain

Opinion on Rehearing.
[5] Appellants, in their motion for a rehearing, insist that, though it be conceded that chapter 88 of the Acts of the Twenty-Ninth Legislature was repealed by chapter 124, acts of the same Legislature, still the order of the commissioners’ court of Falls county, on February 8, 1909, consolidating all of that portion of Friendship district lying in Falls county with Jena district in said county, was unlawful, for the reason that chapter 124 provides that no district shall be created having less than 16 square miles; and that when that portion of Friendship district lying in Falls county was consolidated with Jena district it left Friendship district, situated in Bell county, less than 16 square miles, and consequently the effect of said order of the commissioners’ court of Falls county was to “create” in Bell county a district of less than 16 square miles. The answer to this contention is that, as decided by our Supreme Court in Parks v. West, 102 Tex. 11, 111 S. W. 726, Friendship district, being a county line district, never had any existence prior to the adoption of the constitutional amendment in August, 1908. The attempted creation of such district was void ab initio, and the territory in said illegal district was unallotted. This was the condition in February, 1908, when the commissioners’ court of Falls county allotted the territory of said illegal district to Jena district. This act of the commissioners’ court of Falls county did not create a district in Bell county, over the territory of which it had no jurisdiction, but left said territory, as it in law had been ever since its attempted allotment to the illegal county line district, unallotted territory in Bell county.
Had no action been taken by the commissioners’ court of either Falls or Bell county prior to the adoption of the constitutional amendment, said county line district would have been legalized; but the act of the commissioners’ court of Falls county, on February 8, 1909, being a legal disposition of said territory, the constitutional amendment adopted in the following August did not have the effect to nullify such action. On the contrary, had there been any illegality in the creation of said Jena district as it exist*615ed at the time of the adoption of said constitutional amendment, it would have been validated by said amendment.
Motion overruled.