25 Iowa 447 | Iowa | 1868
Treating plaintiff as in no better position than the original payee (and this is the rule applicable to paper of this kind. See directly in point: Shepherd v. District Township of Richland, 22 Iowa, 595), the only question in the case, is whether these instructions are law. If so, the judgment is right. If not, it is wrong, and must be reversed.
The question of power to make the contract is out of the case. It is conceded that it must be derived from the electors, and that it was not given. The record, we may
Thus, to illustrate, the assent of a majority of the electors, when not convened, to the levy of a tax, would not authorize its levy. Neither would their subsequent assent in the same manner, ratify or make it valid. For if so, an act originally without validity, could by a like illegal or unauthorized act be made valid. In other words, two wrongs would make a right. And, as the electors could not thus be held as ratifying their own act, certainly they could not as to an act of the board, when there was a want of power. It is corporate acts which bind, and these alone, which, in a body of this kind, can be construed into a ratification. If the board could for the
^Ratification should be direct with a full knowledge of the facts, and as before suggested, should be a corporate act. As well might it be said that because no one of the citizens of a municipal organization objected to the use and enjoyment of property, purchased or obtained by -the authorities, without authority, without power to make the contract or bind the corporation, therefore there was ratification and consequent corporate liability. It was as much the duty of the party selling, as the officers, to see that the law was complied with and followed. If in this they failed, if they chose to take the hazard — and we can only presume that they did. so — they must be treated as mefe volunteers, and left to suffer what they might reasonably have anticipated. The analogy drawn from
We have found no case sustaining these instructions, nor can they be sustained on principle. The cases cited by appellee fall far short of the rule for which he contends.
Those cited by appellant, for the most part, fully accord with the views above expressed.
Eeversed.