State Ex Rel. Gattis v. Griffin

Eairclotii, C. J. The facts in this case present the same question as that in Dalby v. Hancock, at this term, and this must be governed by the same principle announced in that case. The same legislative acts are relied upon by the defendants. We were favored with an argument to the effect that the plaintiffs have no property in the office of the Board of Education, because the Board is a public corporation, and, therefore, under the control of the Legislature, and Mills v. Williams, 33 N. C., 558, was cited in its support. In that case the facts were: That the Legislature in 1846 established a new county by the name Pollc. The county officers were elected and entered on the duties of their respective offices, including the sheriff. Before their terms expired, the Legislature repealed the act establishing the county, and, after the repealing act, the sheriff arrested the plaintiff under process, and was sued for an assault, the sheriff insisting that the repeal was unconstitutional and that his office still continued. The Court held that the county was a corporation,. established by the Legislature for the benefit of tire public, and that there was no feature of a contract in it, as there is in private corporations chartered by the Legislature. It follows as a sequence that when the county was destroyed or abolished by the repealing act, all the county offices went *334 with it, as they were merely incidental jmovisions for the public welfare. This is the doctrine of all the cases from Hoke v. Henderson to the present time i. e., when the office is abolished, out and out, the officer is left without an official habitation, but when the office is continued with the same duties and even some additional duties although under a different name of the office, the original owner of the office is entitled to it as his property. In the case before us, the act establishing the office is not repealed but only amended, and therein the analogy fails. Reversed.