8 Ga. 553 | Ga. | 1850
By the Court.
delivering the opinion.
Contracts for the sale of public offices are void at Common Law, as being opposed to public policy, and may be resisted, although not embraced in any Statute ; particularly, it would seem to me, such as relate to offices appertaining to or connected with the administration of justice. The public have a right to the ser
By the contract, as proven by the plaintiff, he was to be paid out of the costs which had accrued, and out of the costs which were to accrue ; and the defendant became the purchaser of not only costs due, and which might be considered as legally vendible, but of costs yet to accrue on the cases in office and in his hands for management. His notes, so far as the accruing costs are concerned, were founded on an illegal consideration, and void in part — void as to the whole. Under these circumstances, the contract is not free of suspicion ; it is, in fact, opposed to the policy of the law. I can, upon the whole, look upon it in no light but as a purchase by the defendant of an office, for a sum certain on his personal responsibility, and as such, void upon authority and principle ; and however unjustifiable his defence upon honorable principles, he is allowed it, as an agent of the law, to maintain its policy.
Let the judgment be reversed.