42 Neb. 499 | Neb. | 1894
On November 13, 1888, the relator instituted in the court below proceedings in quo warranto against school district No. 19, Sioux county, and Daniel Kline, James T. Mason, and W. H. Johnson, claiming to be the officers of said district, for the purpose of determining the legality of the organization of the said respondent district, and ousting it from exercising the rights, franchises, and privileges of a school district. A general demurrer to the information was sustained, the action dismissed, and the relator prosecutes error to this court.
For a correct understanding of the question involved it will not be necessary to set out in this opinion a copy of the information. For our purpose it is sufficient to state that it appears that school district No. 1 was composed of eighteen sections of land, but that on the 4th day of October, 1887, the county superintendent of Sioux county, upon a petition presented to him for that purpose, divided said district No. 1 by taking therefrom eight sections of land, and erecting and forming out of the same said school district No. 19; that the petition for the division of the district was not signed by the requisite number of qualified petitioners; that no notice of the date of the presentation of the petition was ever posted; that no list of the legal voters- of district No. 1 was filed with, or given to, the county superintendent at the time said petition was pre
Section 8, subdivision 3, of chapter 79 of the Compiled Statutes, provides{ “Every school district shall, in all cases, be presumed to have been legally organized when it shall have exercised the franchises and privileges of a district for the term of one year.” It is conceded that, under the foregoing provision, if there had been nothing at fault in the formation and organization of school district No. 19 but mere irregularities, its legal organization would be presumed. It is, however, contended that no such presumption exists where the jurisdictional steps prescribed by the statute for the erection of a school district have not been taken. In other words, where there has been a total disregard of the requirements of the statute in the formation of
The section of the school law we have been considering was construed by this court in State v. School District, 13 Neb., 78. Chief Justice Lake, in delivering the opinion of the court, uses the following language: “This section is exceedingly comprehensive. Its terms are sweeping. It applies, as its language clearly imports, ‘in all cases’ wherein the doings of a district, as such, are called in question or in any way involved, as well to acts during the first year, and from which this presumption arises, as to those performed afterwards. So far, therefore, as concerns the capability of the district to take upon itself the obligation of a borrower of money, its complete organization at the time it assumed to do so must be indisputably presumed.” In the case under consideration the defects in the formation of the respondent district cannot now be questioned, but
Affirmed.