Rosehill Cemetery Co. v. Hopkinson

Citations

• 114 Ill. 209
• 29 N.E. 685

Syllabus

<p>1. Cemetery companies—corporate powers—to make by-laws, rules •and regulations—uniformity of application required. Where the charter incorporating a cemetery company provides for a board of managers, who are authorized to lay off the grounds into lots, sell the same, make by-laws, and such rules and regulations for the government of lot owners and visitors as they may deem necessary, they may make such rules and regulations; but they must be reasonable, equa^ in their operation, and uniform in their application to all owners of lots in the cemetery. The managers will have no right to make a rule which will confer a right upon one owner in regard to the improvement of his lot, and deny the same right to another lot owner.</p> <p>2. Such a company being a quasi public corporation, and possessed of the right to condemn property, and invested with other important powers, is bound to exercise its rights and privileges fairly and impartially; and if, through its officers, it attempts to act arbitrarily, or to transcend its powers to the injury of a lot owner, such action may be reviewed and controlled by the courts.</p> <p>3. Same—erecting a uault upon a cemetery lot—rights of the owner— of rules in restriction thereof. If the board of managers of a public cemetery company incorporated by law, have authority, under their charter, to prevent a lot owner from erecting a vault upon his lot, that power can only be exercised by the adoption of a general rule on the subject applicable to every one.</p> <p>4. A rule adopted by the board of managers of an incorporated cemetery company, that “no vault shall be built entirely or partially above ground without permission of the company,” taken in connection with another that no vault shall be constructed in the cemetery until- the designs and specifications of the same, with a diagram of location, shall have been submitted and approved by the board, can not be regarded as prohibiting the erection of a vault; and in the absence of