16 N.E.2d 727 | Ill. | 1938
This is an appeal from the Appellate Court for the First District, on leave granted, to review judgments in the superior court of Cook county in two consolidated cases, one on behalf of Charles F. McKinley and the other on behalf of Samuel Heller. The cases are identical, except as to dates and amounts, and are both determined by the same principles of law. Plaintiff McKinley had a judgment of $15,828.30 and Heller one for $3803.26 in the superior court, while on appeal the finding was in favor of McKinley for the sum of $32,384.44 and for Heller the sum of $8476.24.
The facts are stated in great detail in the opinion of the Appellate Court to which reference is made. (
The question presented by this record has been considered and decided in a large number of cases, many of which were reviewed by the Appellate Court, and, as the opinion of that court indicates, there is a diversity of opinion as to the question involved. There is no occasion for us to re-review all of these cases nor to go into the matter further than to say that we disagree with the Appellate Court as to the weight of authority, the better line of reasoning and the public policy involved. Neither do we believe that the question is an open one in this State.
It is true we have decided no case precisely and exactly in point, and yet such cases as we have considered indicate a result different from that arrived at by the Appellate Court. In People
v. Schmidt,
In the later case of People v. Burdett,
The two plaintiffs insist that the rules which we have just discussed apply only to mere positions or employments, *272 not to public elective officers, but we fail to discern the validity of such an argument. On the other hand, it seems to us that these rules apply with greater vigor and more urgent public necessity to offices than to mere employments. If the rules of public policy which we have heretofore announced, and to which we now adhere, are important to grain inspectors and city engineers, they are certainly more vital to the public interest when the matter concerns judges. An election for judges of the municipal court results in the election of twelve candidates receiving the highest number of votes, so that a contest against one is necessarily a contest against all. If the public authorities must pay at their peril whenever a contest is started, then any candidate, even though hopelessly defeated, might throw the entire judicial machinery into disorder by merely starting a contest. Such a rule would require the city and its various disbursing officers to become insurers of the result of an election with which they had nothing to do, or else withhold all salaries until the cumbersome machinery of an election contest could be put in motion and the contest carried through to its conclusion. This would include the time within which an appeal might be prosecuted to this court, and if an appeal were prosecuted to this court then, until the matter had been decided here, the time for a petition for rehearing expired or a rehearing denied and the term of court adjourned.
We consider it much more in the public interest to adhere to our previously indicated rule. It is our opinion that a certificate of election following a regular canvass and the possession of a commission by those officers who are commissioned, fully protects the disbursing officers from further liability if they have paid salaries to such an incumbent.
The judgments of the Appellate Court and of the superior court of Cook county will be reversed.
Judgments reversed. *273