68 Iowa 107 | Iowa | 1885
The agreed facts are that the city of Cedar Rapids is a corporation organized under a special charter, and has a population of about 15,000; that the mayor and aider-men appointed a board of health, as provided in chapter 168 of the Acts of the Nineteenth General Assembly, and said board of health adopted and published according to law the following rule or regulation: “There shall not be kept or maintained, within the corporate limits of the city of Cedar Rapids, any hog-pen, or inclosure wherein swine are kept and fed by the owner, lessee or occupant of any property therein, save and except such pens as may be used for the purposes of commence only; and all such jiens used for purposes of commerce shall be kept clean, and the owner, lessee or manager thereof shall see that the same do not become nuisances in any respect.” The city duly enacted an ordinance providing that any person who should knowingly violate or fail to comply with any rule or regulation of the board of health should be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and punished as provided in the ordinance. The defendant maintained, in the corporate limits, a pen in which wg£ kept one hog, not for the purposes of commerce. Such pen was kept clean, and was not a nuisance by reason of filth therein, but was a nuisance, if at all, because of the rule or regulation of the board of health. These facts were agreed upon for .the purpose of enabling the district court to determine whether the regulation of the board of health is valid, and the question to be determined is whether such hoard has the power and authority to adopt such order or regulation, and whether the same can be enforced by ordinance. It is not insisted that the statute authorizing the city to create the board of health is unconstitutional; and, as the parties have agreed that the only question to he determined is whether the board of health had the power and authority to establish the rule or regulation it did, it is immaterial whether the pen as kept was in fact a nuisance. The board had the authority to establish such reasonable rules and regulations as in its opinion would preserve the health of the the inhabitants of the city.
Affirmed.