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47 Tex. 438

Chalk v. Darden

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1877

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1877-07-01

Tried below before the Hon. E. B. Turner. September 19, 1876, Whitfield Chalk brought suit in the Travis District Court against S. H. Darden, Comptroller of the State of Texas, asking for a writ of peremptory mandamus, to compel that officer to issue to plaintiff a pension certificate as a Mier prisoner, under an act granting pensions to the Santa Fe and Mier prisoners, &e., approved April 21,1874.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently January 1947

3 state decisions

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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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Gould, Associate Justice.

¶1We are of opinion that the writ of mandamus was properly refused—

¶21. Because the court had no power over the comptroller in the discharge of the duty imposed on Mm, as one of the heads of department, under the Constitution.

¶32. Because, if the appellant was a Mier prisoner within the meaning of the act of April 21,1874, he had no vested right in the bounty of the State; but it was competent for the same authority which proposed to give, “ to revoke before any interest was perfected in the donee.” The repeal of the law was not retroactive or retrospective legislation. (De *440Cordova v. City of Galveston, 4 Tex., 479; Dale v. Governor, 3 Stew., (Ala.,) 387; Butler v. Palmer, 1 Hill, 329; Cooley’s Const. Lim., 383; Hamilton v. Flynn, 21 Tex., 715.)

¶4The law authorizing the pension having been repealed, the comptroller was left without authority to act, and the writ of mandamus was properly refused.

¶5’ The judgment is affirmed.

¶6Affirmed.

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