75 S.W.2d 832 | Mo. | 1934
This is an original proceeding in mandamus by which relators, as judges of the County Court of Clay County, Missouri, seek to compel respondent, as State Auditor of Missouri, to register certain bonds of said county in the amount of $200,000, the proceeds thereof to be used in the construction of a new county courthouse.
Respondent has waived the issuance of an alternative writ of mandamus and, taking relators' application as and for such writ, has made return thereto admitting all allegations of fact contained in *1127 relators' application, and further admitting that said bonds should be by him registered but for the fact that the notice calling the special election of March 27, 1934, at which issuance of the bonds was authorized, was published in two newspapers of general circulation published in said county only on March 8, 1934; March 15, 1934 and March 22, 1934, which publication respondent contends was insufficient in time and not in compliance with Section 2906, Revised Statutes 1929. To that return relators have filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings. The parties have submitted the case on briefs and it is before this court on the sole question of the sufficiency of the publication of notice calling said special election. The precise question is whether, under the statute, a full period of twenty-one days must intervene between the first of the three required insertions and the date of the election in order to give validity to the bonds authorized.
Section 2906, Revised Statutes 1929 was enacted in 1919. [Laws 1919, p. 173.] The portion here relevant is as follows:
"The clerk of the court shall give notice of the election by advertisement for three consecutive weeks (three insertions) in one or more newspapers published in such county, or, if there is no newspaper published in such county, then by posting written or printed hand bills in three public places in each voting precinct in the county for twenty-one days prior to the day fixed for the election."
Respondent relies upon the rule announced in Young v. Downey,
[1] However, as we said in Russell v. Croy,
It is true, as counsel for respondent suggest, that the statute now under consideration does not, as did the constitutional provision above construed, in terms specify that the "consecutive weeks" of publication should be those "next preceding" the election, but it does provide that they shall be "prior to the day fixed for the election." Without pressing the analogy between the words, "next preceding" and "prior to," we pass to a consideration of the words "three insertions" appearing in parentheses immediately after the words "three consecutive weeks."
In State ex rel. Harris v. Hanson,
[2] According to Webster's New International Dictionary a parenthetical word, phrase or sentence is a comment or explanation. In this instance the clause "for three consecutive weeks" immediately *1129
preceding the clause "three insertions" is so plain as to require no explanation. In State v. Brown,
Counsel for respondent suggest that inasmuch as the Act of 1919 was enacted in lieu of the repealed Act of 1913 (Laws 1913, p. 125, sec. 9), which provided for "at least twenty days' notice" whether given by newspaper or handbill publication, it will be presumed that the Legislature intended that the length of publication, whether by newspaper or handbills, should be the same, and that twenty-one days being specifically required by the latter method it was the intention of the Legislature to require the same length of time by the former. This conclusion seems unwarranted. If the same number of days was intended to be required the time by each method of publication would doubtless have been designated in days as was done in the Act of 1913. But such was not done. In the Act of 1919 the period for publication by newspaper was designated by weeks and insertions. Nor is it unusual, even in the same statute, for one form of publication to differ from another as to duration. Witness the statute construed in Young v. Downey, supra. *1130
Upon the record presented here it appears that publication of the notice was sufficient in point of time to comply with Section 2906, Revised Statutes 1929. Therefore, it is ordered that our peremptory writ of mandamus issue. All concur, except Leedy,J., absent.