Marsh v. Fulton County

77 U.S. 676 (1870) 10 Wall. 676

MARSH
v.
FULTON COUNTY.

Supreme Court of United States.

Messrs. O.H. Browning and O.C. Skinner, for plaintiff in error.

Mr. S. Corning Judd, contra.

Mr. Justice FIELD delivered the opinion of the court.

The questions presented for our consideration are, first, whether the bonds issued by the clerk of the County Court of Fulton County to the Central Division of the Mississippi and Wabash Railroad Company were, at the time of their issue, valid obligations of the County of Fulton; and, second; if not thus valid, whether they have become obligatory upon the county by any subsequent ratification.

Were they valid when issued? The answer depends upon the law of Illinois then in force. The clerk of the County Court possessed no general authority to bind the county. He was a mere ministerial officer of the board of supervisors; and that body was equally destitute of authority in this particular, except as the law of Illinois gave it. That law authorized any county of the State, and, of course, its supervisors, who exercised the powers of the county, to subscribe stock to any railroad company in a sum not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars, and to pay for such subscription in its bonds, provided such subscription was previously sanctioned by a majority of the qualified voters of the county at an election called for the expression of their wishes on the subject, and it prohibited any subscription or the issue of any bonds for such subscription without such previous sanction. "No subscription shall be made or purchase bond issued by any county," says the law, "unless a majority of the qualified voters of such county ... shall vote for the same." And the law further requires that the notices calling for the election "shall specify the company in which stock is proposed to be subscribed."

These provisions furnish the answer to the first question presented. The only subscription authorized by the voters of Fulton County was that to the Mississippi and Wabash Railroad Company, and one to the Petersburgh and Springfield Company. The Central Division of the Mississippi and Wabash Railroad Company was a different corporation from the original company. It has been so held by the Supreme Court of Illinois in a case involving the consideration of a portion of the bonds in suit and the remaining sixty thousand dollars of bonds of the original subscription.

The amendatory act of 1857 dividing the road into three divisions, and subjecting each division to the control and management of a different board, clothed with all the powers of the original board, so far as the division was concerned, worked a fundamental change in the character of the original corporation, and created three distinct corporations in its place. A subscription to a company whose charter provided for a continuous line of railroad of two hundred and thirty miles, across the entire State, was voted by the electors of Fulton County; not a subscription to a company whose line of road was less than sixty miles in extent, and which, disconnected from the other portions of the original line, would be of comparatively little value.

But it is earnestly contended that the plaintiff was an innocent purchaser of the bonds without notice of their invalidity. If such were the fact we do not perceive how it could affect the liability of the County of Fulton. This is not a case where the party executing the instruments possessed a general capacity to contract, and where the instruments might for such reason be taken without special inquiry into their validity. It is a case where the power to contract never existed — where the instruments might, with equal authority, have been issued by any other citizen of the county. It is a case, too, where the holder was bound to look to the action of the officers of the county and ascertain whether the law had been so far followed by them as to justify the issue of the bonds. The authority to contract must exist before any protection as an innocent purchaser can be claimed by the holder. This is the law even as respects commercial paper, alleged to have been issued under a delegated authority, and is stated in the case of Floyd Acceptances.^[*] In speaking of notes and bills issued or accepted by an agent, acting under a general or special power, the court says: "In each case the person dealing with the agent, knowing that he acts only by virtue of a delegated power, must, at his peril, see that the paper on which he relies comes within the power under which the agent acts. And this applies to every person who takes the paper afterwards; for it is to be kept in mind that the protection which commercial usage throws around negotiable paper cannot be used to establish the authority by which it was originally issued."

It is also contended that if the bonds in suit were issued without authority their issue was subsequently ratified, and various acts of the supervisors of the county are cited in support of the supposed ratification. These acts fall very far short of showing any attempted ratification even by the supervisors. But the answer to them all is that the power of ratification did not lie with the supervisors. A ratification is, in its effect upon the act of an agent, equivalent to the possession by him of a previous authority. It operates upon the act ratified in the same manner as though the authority of the agent to do the act existed originally. It follows that a ratification can only be made when the party ratifying possesses the power to perform the act ratified. The supervisors possessed no authority to make the subscription or issue the bonds in the first instance without the previous sanction of the qualified voters of the county. The supervisors in that particular were the mere agents of the county. They could not, therefore, ratify a subscription without a vote of the county, because they could not make a subscription in the first instance without such authorization. It would be absurd to say that they could, without such vote, by simple expressions of approval, or in some other indirect way, give validity to acts, when they were directly in terms prohibited by statute from doing those acts until after such vote was had. That would be equivalent to saying that an agent, not having the power to do a particular act for his principal, could give validity to such act by its indirect recognition.^[*]

We do not mean to intimate that liabilities may not be incurred by counties independent of the statute. Undoubtedly they may be. The obligation to do justice rests upon all persons, natural and artificial, and if a county obtains the money or property of others without authority, the law, independent of any statute, will compel restitution or compensation. But this is a very different thing from enforcing an obligation attempted to be created in one way, when the statute declares that it shall only be created in another and different way.

We perceive no error in the record, and the judgment of the Circuit Court must, therefore, be

AFFIRMED.

NOTES

[*] 7 Wallace, 676.

[*] McCracken v. City of San Francisco, 16 California, 624.