Court Opinion

ID: 9794671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:09:26.791049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:35.661261
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Chief Justice.
Of the several protestants originally appearing in this action, Messrs. R. C. Cates, E. N. Potts, G. R. Sharpe, and Floyd Stine, only, have filed a petition for rehearing. They, only, are intended by the reference to them hereinafter appearing, i. e., as “Protestants”.
*357Protestants assert that in this action certain claims were made by petitioner and denied by protestants and others; that the resolution of such contentions required the taking of evidence.
Protestants state that in order to substantiate the claims of others and themselves as to the true facts existent in the premises certain other litigants in this action gave notice to take depositions and requested the Chief Justice to issue subpoenas and filed a “Statement of issues and questions of fact upon which evidence and testimony by deposition or otherwise, will be necessary or required for determination of issues herein”, which actions protestants adopt and join in and which “Statement of issues and questions of fact upon which evidence and testimony by deposition or otherwise, will be necessary or required for determination of issues herein” such protestants adopt.
Protestants further say that under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, they are entitled to a full and fair hearing — to their day in court — but that up to the present time they have been denied such rights in this proceeding and that they are -without remedy.
Protestants further state that the decision of this court, upholding the validity of Senate Bill 432 of the Twenty-Eighth Oklahoma Legislature, the trust indenture herein involved and the proposed bonds to be issued thereunder to be paid out of certain allocation of motor fuel taxes on turnpike facilities, is erroneous and is violative of the Oklahoma Constitutional prohibition against creation of state debt, and permits Turnpike Authority to do indirectly that which it cannot do directly, to wit: To violate the Constitution of Oklahoma including Art. 10, Secs. IS, 19, 23 and 25 thereof ; and that the Court further committed grievous error in failing, neglecting and refusing to hold and determine that under rule announced in Boswell case, Senate Bill No. 432, the trust indenture, and the proposed bonds are each and all illegal and unconstitutional, and that application of Turnpike Authority should be in all respects disapproved and disallowed.
An opinion heretofore promulgated herein, we think, sufficiently inferred that with our denial of right of protestants to take testimony, the subpoenas theretofore issued fell and became defunct. The motion of petitioner to quash subpoenas is hereby specifically sustained.
Article 10, Sec. 25, of the Oklahoma Constitution, providing for a vote of the people prior to validity of any bond issue creating any debt against the State, has no application in this case inasmuch as we have held in opinion herein that no debt was created.
Full disposition of protestants’ other arguments was made in opinion.
The motion for oral argument and petition for rehearing, respectively, are denied.
IRWIN, J., dissents.