16 N.Y.S. 768 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1891
The relator’s claim is a just one, and if the defendant can be made to pay it without violating any principle of law it should be done. We do not think, any issue of fact was raised by the respondent’s denial that he had any funds applicable to the payment of the warrant presented, or that the claim was founded upon contract. Such an answer was evasive, and involved a question of law. He did not say he had no money in hand, but was careful to say “applicable to pay the warrant.” It was incumbent upon him to.state facts, and not his conclusions of law upon that subject. Each of the warrants was drawn against an appropriation of $50,000, made in this year’s tax levy of Long Island City for the furnishing of the goods mentioned in relator’s bills. The respondent did not deny that he had in his hands that money so appropriated, but he claimed the contracts were void because they were made prior to the tax levy, and, second, that the appropriation was void because it was in excess of the limitations imposed by the charter. The contracts were valid. The charter (chapter 461, Laws 1871, p. 896, tit. 9, e. 2) confers ample power on the board of education to erect and furnish schoolhouses, and to make all needful repairs, and pay the expenses out of the revenues raised pursuant to the act. The act of 1887, c. 519, upon which the court below based its decision, was passed not for the purpose of limiting the powers of the board of education or the city authorities in building schoolhouses or making repairs, but for the purpose of enabling the city to issue bonds, and there is nothing in that act that requires that the school-houses shall be completed solely with the money derived from a sale of.the bonds. The only effect of that act was to authorize certain sums to be raised in that