¶1I concur in the conclusion reached in the opinion of the court solely upon the ground that the controversy as to the particular office in dispute is settled by the prevailing opinions delivered in the cases between the claimants to the office on former appeals. Accepting those decisions as the law of the particular controversy, as the court is bound to do, it must follow that Worrell is the rightful •officer, and that, as the rightful officer, he is entitled to the ■compensation attached to the office. The case, in the form it has assumed, is unique, and can not, as I suppose, be deemed a precedent justifying the inference that a State disbursing, or distributing, officer must, at his peril, decide a controversy between rival claimants to a public office. This I say because the ■doctrine of the prevailing opinions on former appeals is that Peelle did not have, and could not have, any title to the office ; and upon these decisions the auditor of State could have acted without incurring any risk, inasmuch as the entire controversy as to the right to the office concerned matters of law and not of fact. In saying this I do not mean to be understood as receding from the opinions heretofore expressed upon the principal question, for I here simply yield to the doctrine declared by the court in its former decisions.
129 Ind. 44
State ex rel. Worrell v. Carr
Decided June 18, 1891
Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1891-06-18
<p>Office and Offices. — Officers de fado and de jure. — Salary.—Where a defacto officer assumes to retain the office after the qualification of the-officer de jure and continues to discharge its duties, a payment of salary to such de facto officer by a disbursing officer of the State, with full knowledge of the invalidity of the de facto officer’s title, is no defence to an action for the salary by the officer de jure, who has also discharged the duties of the office.</p> <p>Appbofbiation. — For Salary. — Constitutional Law. — In an act appropriating money to pay the salary and expenses of a certain office, a provision that it shall be paid to a certain person named and none other, is unconstitutional and void as attempting to adjudicate as to who is the legal officer entitled to the salary.</p>
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1891-06-18
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently December 2009 · most notably City Ry Co v. Citizens' St R Co (1897), 85 Wash. 2d 266 - City of Tacoma v. O'Brien (1975)
1 federal appellate · 46 state decisions — followed in 18 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
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