237 Mo. 39 | Mo. | 1911
This is an action to recover a money judgment, and a serious question is as to our jurisdiction under the Act of 1909,# increasing the jurisdiction of the Courts of Appeals to $7500. This case was not submitted to this Court until long after that act took effect,'and if the amount involved is less than $7500 it was our duty to certify the cause to the proper Court, of Appeals. The appeal in this case was taken October 17, 1906. -Plaintiff filed a petition, to which a demurrer was filed and sustained. To determine the amount we must, therefore, go to the petition itself. We are not bound by the prayer of the petition, but must take the whole instrument and determine what sum is involved and at issue at the date of the judgment from which the appeal is taken. [Wilson v. Russler, 162 Mo. 565; Wolff v. Matthews, 98 Mo. 246; Milling Co. v. Walsh, 97 Mo. 287; State ex rel. King v. Gill, 107 Mo. 44.]
The prayer of this petition reads: “Wherefore, premises considered, plaintiff prays judgment against the defendant for the said sum of $5672.56, the amount of said indebtedness so evidenced by said warrants, with six per cent interest per annum on the respective sums mentioned in said warrants, respectively, from the said dates thereof respectively. And that plaintiff have such other further and general or special relief in the premises as equity may require and as to the court shall seem meet.”
But going to the petition itself, we find this state of facts. In 1894, under the Act of 1893 (Laws 1893, p. 188) a proper number of persons residing and owning swamp and overflow lands in Pike and Lincoln
Upon the filing of the mandate of this court with the county court that court proceeded as by our opinion directed. On November 13, 1903, the county court took up and heard said petition and found that the establishment of said drainage district was necessary, and again appointed three commissioners. In August, 1904, those commissioners filed their report, and on November 29, said report coming on for hearing was duly heard and by the court modified and approved, and on said date the court adjudged said district to be a drainage district under the name of
“That in the construction of said work said commissioners adopted, appropriated and used said old levee its entire length of twelve miles and made same a part of and included samp in the work so by them' to be done, as such commissioners, for and on the behalf of and as the corporate authority of the defendant King’s Lake Drainage and Levee District, which thereupon and thereby received, accepted and appropriated the same with all the advantages and value thereof; and further that in pursuance of said report of said commissioners and of the said order and judgment of said court confirming same, large credits were given and allowed to the various land owners in said district on their assessments of benefits, for and on behalf of said twelve miles of levee so adopted, appropriated and used, thereby indirectly saving to the commissioners the full cost and expense originally incurred in the construction of said levee and for which the indebtedness herein declared on then existed and then and now remains unpaid.
“Plaintiff says that the cost of said twelve miles of levee to the first or original commissioners of said district and their successors so appointed as aforesaid was the sum of $18,690.92, and that same is and was reasonably worth that sum; and that for the building of same the said first named commissioners or their successors were unable to pay in full, but that said district was, at the time of the appointment of said last named or present commissioners and is yet, still largely indebted to plaintiff for the work of*44 building tbe same; said indebtedness being evidenced by tbe treasury warrants hereinbefore referred to and then and now owned and held by plaintiff, all as aforesaid, and which said warrants are next set forth, filed and described as follows, to-wit:”
Then follows a description of the warrants and the issuance thereof as we have shortly described above.
Plaintiff then charges that the district issuing to him the described warrants and the present defendant are one and the same. The petition in this regard reads:
“Plaintiff says that the defendant King’s Lake Drainage and Levee District is a continuation of and is one and the same corporate body as the King’s Lake Drainage and Levee District under contract with and for which the said Thomas O. Wilson constructed the said twelve miles of said levee and which, by its said first mentioned board of commissioners in consideration thereof, executed to him the said warrants as hereinbefore set out. That by accepting, adopting, appropriating and using the said twelve miles of said levee so constructed as aforesaid, and making same a part of the work necessary to be done in protecting and reclaiming the lands within said district, the defendant is, and in equity and good conscience should be adjudged to be held to have ratified and confirmed the acts of the said William J. Seaman, William H. Baskett and Prank L. Wilson, the first named board of commissioners, and their successors in office as aforesaid in constructing same and in the incurring of said indebtedness to said Wilson therefor so evidenced by said warrants now held and owned by plaintiff as aforesaid. And that in equity and good conscience the defendant is and ought to be held and adjudged to be liable to the plaintiff for the amount of said warrants and the interest accrued thereon. And that the- defend*45 ant and its present corporate authority are, and by reason of the premises ought to be held and adjudged to be, estopped and precluded from denying such liability. That plaintiff is without remedy, recourse or redress on said warrants or for the value of said work for which same were issued, or otherwise in the premises, against said district or the lands embraced and included therein or the owners thereof, except through or against the now legally constituted corporate body thereof, to-wit, the defendant herein.”
The petition then avers that by reason of the premises and facts “an action hath accrued to the plaintiff to demand and recover against the defendant the sum of $567.56, the amount of the principal sum of said warrants numbered 5192, 189 and 218, and also lawful interest on the several sums mentioned in said warrants, respectively, from their respective dates aforesaid. ’ ’
A thorough examination of the petition shows that the action is not one upon the warrants themselves, but for a debt equal in amount to the warrants. The petition shows that this defendant was not incorporated until 1904 and that this judgment appealed from was entered in 1906. The old proceeding was torn up, root and branch, by the judgment of this court, in the case mentioned, and such opinion becomes the law of this case, whether right or wrong. With that opinion the contracts made and the warrants issued by the old board fell to the ground. What rights plaintiff may have are such as have accrued since the organization of defendant. So that if we count interest on the alleged balance at six per cent for two years, it does not make the amount reach the jurisdiction of this court. In other words, it is less than $7500. So that considering the amount involved at the date of the judgment, as such amount is gathered from all the facts pleaded, we are without jurisdiction.
The Burris case was approved by this court in Banc, in an opinion by Brace, J., in which all concurred, in the case of School District v. Boyle et al., 182 Mo. 347.
In Morrison v. Morey, supra, whilst we there said that a levee district was a political subdivision of the State, yet, we did not say it was such within the meaning of the constitutional provision defining the jurisdiction of this court. The question of jurisdiction was not raised, and for reasons apparent on the
So, too, in State ex rel. Stotts, Collector, v. Wall et al., 153 Mo. 216, following the Morrison case, we incidently said that a levee district was a political subdivision of the State, hut the question of the jurisdiction on that point was not raised. In fact the question of jurisdiction was not raised at all, and the title of the case would indicate the reason.
In the later case of State ex rel. v. Drainage District, 192 Mo. 517, an original action of mandamus in this court, where the amount involved was $65,000 in bonds, the question of jurisdiction was not raised. We there said: “The first contention of the relator is that the respondent district is a private and not a public corporation, and therefore the Act of 1905' could not have the effect of repealing' the old law under which the respondent corporation was acting. This contention is untenable. In Morrison v. Morey, 146 Mo. l. c. 560, and in Land & Stock Co. v. Miller, 170 Mo. l. c. 253 and 258, a like contention was held untenable, and drainage corporations were held to be public, governmental agencies, and in no sense private corporations. The conclusions then reached are emphasized both by section 8253, Revised Statutes 1899, and by section 8253 of the Act of 1905, both of which decláre that the judgment of the circuit court shall duly declare and decree said drainage district ‘a public corporation of this State.’ Thus such corporations have been declared to he public corporations, both by this court, and by the express declaration of the acts under which they are authorized “to he formed and to exist.”
In the case of Kansas City v. Neal, 122 Mo. l. c. 234, we said: “That Kansas.City is not a p.olitical subdivision of the State, within the- meaning of the Constitution, is equally clear. Subdivision means to
We are of the opinion that the words, “other political subdivisions of the State,” as used in section 12, article 6, following as they do, the word “county,” mean such political subdivisions as may be created having powers similar to those of a county, and do not refer to townships, school districts, levee districts, drainage districts, and such like minor political subdivisions of the State. We are thereof of the opinion that the defendant is not a political subdivision of the State in a jurisdictional sense and within the meaning of section 12, article 6, of the Constitution.
We have discussed only such questions as we had to discuss on the question of jurisdiction. In our judgment, we are without jurisdiction in this case, and the merits thereof we leave open for the St. Louis Court of Appeals, to which court we transfer the cause.
The opinion of Graves, J., in Division No. One, is adopted as the opinion of the court.