70 Iowa 202 | Iowa | 1886
The contract alleged to be ultra wires was made by'the county with the defendant Cruzen, whereby the
The legal title to the property having been placed in the county, we are unable to see how the county could be divested by a decree to which it is not a party. It may be that the county has no desire to rescind, and could, in fact, show that its contract of purchase was not ultra vires. Without question, the county has a right to be heard before its title can be disturbed. Possibly the court below did not intend to disturb the title. The language of the decree is “that the contract between the defendant Cruzen and the board of supervisors of Adams county, for a poor-farm, is absolutely null and void.” It may be that the intention in decreeing the invalidity of the contract was merely to afford a basis for enjoining the payment of warrants issued for a part of the purchase money. If this is so, then the court proceeded upon the theory that the county could be relieved of a part of the burden of its contract while retaining the entire benefit of it. Of such decree the county could not, of course complain. But such a decree, cannot, in our opinion, be sustained.
It appears to us to be well settled as a rule, with one exception, that, where the consideration received by a corpora-
Short, 53 How. Pr., 506; Leonard v. City of Canton, 35 Miss., 189; Argenti v. San Francisco, 16 Cal., 255, (282); Moore v. Mayor, etc., of New York, 73 N. Y., 238; Lucas Co. v. Hunt, 5 Ohio St., 488.
Many qitestions have been raised in this case which we have not noticed, but, in the view which we have taken of the case, it does not appear to us to be necessary to notice them.
The decree of the circuit court must be
REVERSED.