5 Mart. 8 | La. | 1819
delivered the opinion of the court. The police jury brought this action, it*
The answer contains a peremptory exception to the sufficiency of the petition, in law, to authorize a recovery and a general denial.
During the trial of the cause, in the parish Court} eight bills of exceptions were taken by the defendant’s counsel and must be disposed of before a discussion on the merits.
The first is to the introduction of any testimony, on the cause of action set forth in the pe*> tition. This is nothing more than a repetition of the exception in the answer, which was attempted to be supported on two grounds : that the police jury have no right to sue eo nomine, as a corporation and that, by their own shewing, they have not pursued the course prescribed by the law by which they were created and under ■which they now act.
The acts of the legislature of 1807 and 1818 have created political bodies to direct nnd man-’ age the police of their respective parishes, ua-
It is agreed that police juries derive all their powers and authority from the acts of the legislature above cited, and that these are to be taken and considered as one act, so far as the provisions of the first are not inconsistent with those of the latter. Both acts grant to police ju* lies power, in the most general terms, to make regulations relative to roads and levees according as circumstances may require, and, in some instances, the judge of the parish has the right of ordering a levee to be made, at the expense of an inhabitant, who fails to comply with the regulations of the police jury.
Thepetitiou states that the defendant was required to complete his levee, within a limited time, which he had been ordered to make under a-regulation of the police jury — that he was unable or uuwilling to perform the work required of him, and the parish judge ordered it to be done, at his expense, which was accordingly carried into complete execution and paid out of the parish treasury — &c. It is believed that
The seven remaining bills of exceptions are to the admissibility of certain witnesses, on the score of incompetency and of written evidence offered by the plaintiffs. The objection to the witnesses, on the score of their being members of the corporation, must be repelled, according to the act of the territorial legislature of the S6th of March 1806, 3 Martin’s Digest, 482, n. 5.
The objection made to the admission in evidence of the minutes of the deliberations of the police jury, on account of their being in the French language ought not to be sustained. They are not of that class of proceedings required by the constitution to be in English.
Taking the whole of these exceptions together we do not discover in the opinion of the parish court, any error requiring that the cause be remanded, and we will proceed to investigate it on its merits.
In doing this, it is necessary to recur to what has been already noticed, in part, in treating of
In the present case, the appellee was required to make his levee, the necessity and extent of which was determined by the police jury.- He failed to do it, and the work was completed by the slaves of the neighboring planters, in obedience» to the order of the parish judge, and they were paid out of the parish treasury. But it is said that, these things were done without proper authority, because it does not appear that the jury, who made the regulations relative to the levee of the parish in general, and particularly in relation to that of the defendant, were con-
The work was paid for at the rate of three dollars per cubic toise. The act last cited allows to the inhabitants one dollar per day for the labour of their slaves, when compelled to work as in the present case : we are of opinion that this provision of the law ought substantially to be carried into effect. The evidence is various and contradictory, as to the time which would be requisite for a good la-bourer to complete a cubic toise of levee. Some of the witnesses say that it would require three days and others only one. The truth most probably would give a medium portion of time— twh days for each toise, which we think proper to adopt, in fixing the amount of the judgment.
It is, therefore, ordered, adjudged and decreed, that the judgment of the parish court be annulled, avoided and reversed: aud proceeding to give such a judgment as in our opinion ought to have been given, it is further ordered, adjudged and decreed, that the plaintiffs and appellants recover from the defendant and ap-pellee the sum of two thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two dollars, with costs in both courts.