117 Wash. 275 | Wash. | 1921
On December 1, 1919, certain electors of a portion of the county of Okanogan filed a petition with the board of county commissioners of that county, praying that a portion thereof be incorporated as a municipal corporation under the name of the town of Molson. The petition contained an accurate description of the boundaries of the proposed corporation, and was in other respects sufficiently regular. On the presentation, of the petition, the board of county commissioners fixed January 6, 1920, at 10 o’clock a. m., in the rooms of the board in the courthouse at the city of Okanogan, as a time and place for hearing the petition, and directed that the
The single question presented here is whether the failure of the published notice to correctly describe the boundaries of the proposed corporation is fatal to the proceedings. It is our conclusion that it is so. The
No principle of. law is better settled than the principle that notice must be given of the organization of a municipal corporation in the form prescribed by statute. Abbott, in his work on Municipal Corporations, p. 34, uses this language:
“It is a fundamental rule of law that before action- or proceedings of any character can be legally taken affecting the rights, either property or political, of an individual, he must have notice of the pendency of such proposed action or proceedings. This rule of law applies to the present question. A proposed municipal or quasi public corporation necessarily includes the property of a large number of individuals. The • law gives them a right to be heard upon all matters pertaining to or affecting their rights. The*278 necessary petition preliminary to the organization of. a public corporation, under authority of law, must be brought home either by actual or constructive notice to the attention of all possessing rights within the limits of the territory included. ’’
So this court, in Territory ex rel. Kelly v. Stewart, 1 Wash. 98, 23 Pac. 405, said:
“There are few, if any, acts of state bearing upon individuals more important than those which determine their liability to be included in particular municipalities; and the cases are rare in which they have not been allowed an opportunity of being heard in every step of the proceedings.”
In State ex rel. Blum v. Port of Bayocean, 65 Ore. 506, 133 Pac. 85, the question was on the sufficiency of an election notice held to determine whether a port should be organized. The statute required the description of the territory proposed to be included therein to be published in the notice of the election. In the description a call of a course was omitted, and the question was whether this invalidated the proceedings. The court said:
“We do not believe the notice of election sufficiently describes the exterior boundaries of the proposed port. The omission of one call from the description of the boundary leaves a hiatus to be supplied by the imagination of the person reading the notice. A defective description of a boundary in a deed may be corrected by a suit to have it reformed according to the true intent of the parties, but a misdescription in an election notice cannot be corrected nor reformed by any sort of proceeding. It must be absolutely definite in itself. This notice lacks that quality, and the proceeding is void.”
But the authorities need not be multiplied. They are in substantial accord on the proposition that the-notice is. jurisdictional and must be complied with if the proceedings are to have validity.
Parker, C. J., Holcomb, Bridges, and Mackintosh, JJ., concur.