37 F. 563 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Missouri | 1889
This is an action on 49 county warrants, issued during the years from 1882 to 1886, both inclusive, inpayment for books and stationery sold and delivered to Knox county at the instance and request of various county officers, and for public use. The defense is that when the warrants sued upon were issued by the county court of Knox comity, the county court had drawn warrants in excess of the total revenue of the county lor the years during which the warrants were respectively issued, and that the debt sued for was for that reason contracted in violation of section 12, art. 10, Const. Mo., which provides that “no county * * * shall be allowed to become indebted in any manner, or for any purpose, to an amount exceeding in any year the income and revenue provided for such year, without the assent of two-thirds of the voters thereof, voting at an election to he held for that purpose.” The case has been submitted upon an agreed statement of facts, from which it appears that the books and stationery in question were furnished for public use at the instance and request of the probate judge, the clerks of the county and circuit court, and the sheriff and collector of the county, and that' the same “were suitable and necessary for the officers in their official capacity to whom they were sold.” It also appears that the total warrants issued by Knox county each year from 1882 to 1886, both inclusive, exceeded the revenue derived for the respective years from the highest, rate of taxation which the law permits, to-wit, 50 cents on each $100 of valuation; but that, deducting the warrants drawn on the “pauper fund” and “road and bridge fund,” the warrants drawn in any one of said years did not exceed the revenue for said year. Judgment must be rendered for the plaintiff for the full amount claimed in each count, (that is, for the amount of the warrant described therein and interest at 6 per cent, per annum from the date of the alleged presentation,) for two reasonsi
In the second place, it must be held that the indebtedness now under consideration is not within the purview of the section of the constitution above quoted, (section 12, art. 10,) because it was an indebtedness which the various county officers who contracted it were bound to incur in the proper discharge of their official functions. It is made the duty of the various officers at whose instance the books and stationery involved in this case were supplied “to provide suitable books and stationery” at the expense of the-county for the transaction of business in their several of