Hughes County v. Livingston

Citations

• 104 F. 306
• 43 C.C.A. 541
• 1900 U.S. App. LEXIS 3916

Syllabus

<p>1. Power to Issde Municipal Bonds — Estoppel from Denying by Recitals.</p> <p>A quasi municipality may not, by recitals in its bonds, estop itself from denying that it is without power to issue them, when the laws are such that there can be no state of facts or of conditions under which it would have the authority to emit them.</p> <p>2. Same.</p> <p>But if the laws are such that there might, under any state of facts or circumstances, be legal power in the quasi municipality to issue its bonds, it may by recitals therein estop itself from denying that those facts or circumstances exist, and that it had lawful power to send the bonds forth, unless the constitution or the law under which the bonds are issued prescribes some public record as the test of the existence of some of those facts or circumstances.</p> <p>3. Same — Estoppel by Recitals of Officers.</p> <p>When a municipal body hasi authority to issue bonds on the condition that certain facts exist, or certain acts have been done, and the law -intrusts the power to, and imposes the duty upon, its officers to ascertain, determine, and certify the existence of those facts, or the doing of those acts, at the time of the issuing of the bonds, their certificate will estop the municipality, as against a bona fide holder of the bonds, from proving its falsity to defeat them.</p> <p>4. Same — Counties—Certifying Officers to Examine Record of Canvassing Board.</p> <p>It is the duty of the board of county commissioners, which is required to certify that bonds are issued in pursuance of an act of the legislature, which prescribes the favorable vote of the electors of the county as a condition precedent to their issue, to examine the proper record, when it is not itself the canvassing board, and ascertain whether or not a legal proposition to issue the bonds has been sustained by tbe vote of tbe electors, and its certificate that the bonds have been issued in pursuance of the act precludes the county from defeating them