State ex rel. C. C. & C. Railroad v. Whitesides

Citations

• 30 S.C. 579
• 3 L.R.A. 777
• 9 S.E. 661
• 1889 S.C. LEXIS 134

Syllabus

<p>1. Where a public officer refuses to discharge a ministerial duty necessary to the enjoyment of a legal right by an individual who has no other adequate and sufficient remedy, mandamus will lie.</p> <p>2. But whore a township voted a subscription to a railroad under an unconstitutional statute, and the county commissioners, as the agents of such township, issued bonds in payment therefor, and the county commissioners, assuming to act as such agents, made a contract with a trust company whereby the trust company took possession of said bonds and agreed to deliver them to a construction company, whenever the engineer of the railroad company certified that the railroad was completed through such township, and when this certificate was countersigned by the chairman of the board of county commissioners, attested by the clerk — the subscription, the issue of the bonds, and the trust indenture being all unauthorized and void, mandamus will not lie after the railroad has been completed, to compel such chairman to countersign, and such clerk to attest his signature to, the certificate of the chief engineer that the road has been so completed.</p> <p>3. But this township — an incorporated territorial community, without any corporate purpose, and therefore without authority to incur a debt or impose a tax — having declared its willingness to be taxed to aid in the construction of a railroad through its limits, such railroad is as to such township a public purpose, and the legislature may, in its sovereign capacity, impose upon such community a tax to pay for such subscription and accept the bonds so illegally issued, as the representatives of the debt of the township so created by the legislature for this public purpose. And this was done by the act of December 22, 1888 (20 Stat., 12), which is constitutional and valid.</p> <p>4. This statute, however, was not intended to validate the former unconstitutional statute, nor can the legislature validate acts which it was withou