State ex rel. Niggle v. Kirkwood

Citations

• 15 Wash. 298
• 46 P. 331
• 1896 Wash. LEXIS 183

Syllabus

<p>QUO WARRANTO — WHEN LIES — REMOVAL PROM CITY OFFICE — SUFFICIENCY OF CHARGES — REVIEW OF PROCEEDINGS.</p> <p>Where a public officer of a city has been removed from office upon certain charges and findings made against him by the mayor, who has appointed a successor, the proper remedy for the officer removed is by an information in the nature of a quo warranto.</p> <p>The removal by the mayor of a city of a police commissioner is warranted, when it is charged and proved that as such officer he attempted to interfere with the administration of the police department in the enforcement of the law against prostitution, by seeking to influence the chief of police to permit the occupation of certain premises for immoral purposes, which the mayor had ordered abated as a nuisance, and had attempted to remove the chief of police upon failing to influence him, the commissioner being interested as owner in certain of the buildings so occupied for immoral purposes, from which the mayor had directed the objectionable occupants to be removed.</p> <p>Although charges preferred against a public officer by the mayor of a city may be somewhat indefinite, objection thereto on that ground cannot be raised in the superior court, when the person removed from office had gone to trial on them before the mayor without objection and without any motion to make more specific and certain.</p>