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140 Ala. 349

Scarbrough v. Watson

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1903

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1903-11-15

Tried before the Hon. John Pelham. This proceeding was instituted by the appellee, I. E. Watson, filing a petition addressed to the Judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, in which he averred that he was Clerk of the Circuit Court of Calhoun county; that he had presented to the commissioners court of said county an itemized account for $104, for copying the minutes of the circuit court for the year 1902, and that said account had been disallowed.

Relies on Shinbone v. Randolph County · Schroeder v. Colbert County · Marengo County v. Lyles

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1903-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently March 2007

12 state decisions

4019031910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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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MoCLELLAN, C. J.

¶1A claim against a county cannot be sued and recovered on unless it has been presented to the commissioner’s court and been disallowed by that body; and the complaint must aver such presentation and disallowance.—Code, 1896, § 13; Shinbone v. Randolph, 56 Ala. 183; Schroeder v. Colbert County, 66 Ala. 137.

¶2Recovery cannot be had in such cases on the common counts, no averment of presentation and disallowance being added. Hence it is that the case of Marengo County v. Lyles, 101 Ala. 423, was properly decided; but what is there said as to plaintiff’s remedy being by mandamus is a dictum, unnecessary to the decision of the case, and unsound, unless the question was there affected by a local statute not mentioned in the report or opinion. The remedy in such case is by action under section 13 of the Code; and, it is plain, adequate and complete. The claim involved in this proceeding is of the class dealt with by that statute. The petitioner had this plain, adequate and complete remedy by action at law; and, having this remedy, he was not entitled to a mandamus to the county commissioners to pay it.

¶3The judgment awarding the writ must be reversed, and a judgment will be here entered dismissing the petition for mandamus.

¶4What we have said is not to be taken as intimating any opinion upon the validity of the claim.

¶5Reversed and rendered.

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