Minnesota Supreme Court, 1887

Andrews v. School-District No. 4

Minnesota Supreme Court · Decided June 13, 1887 · Gilpillan

37 Minn. 96; 33 N.W. 217; 1887 Minn. LEXIS 43 (Minnesota Reports)

Counsel

Chas. L. Lewis, for appellants., Clapp, Woodard & Cowie, for respondent.

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Citation treatment has not been reviewed for this case. The notes below come from the citation graph and the Minnesota Revisor's amendment records, not from a review of how later courts treated this decision.

(as of 9/30/2026)

Last cited by a Minnesota appellate court in 1931, among the opinions in this site’s citation index.

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Cases that cite this one

10 later published cases cite this decision.

School District No. 75 v. Farmers State Bank (Minn. 1931)
Martin v. Common School District No. 3 (Minn. 1925)
Eastgate v. Osago School District (N.D. 1919)
Tracy Cement Tile Co. v. City of Tracy (Minn. 1919)
City of Minneapolis v. Canterbury (Minn. 1913)
State ex rel. Morris v. Clark (Minn. 1912)
State Bank v. Town of Goodland (Minn. 1909)
Johnson v. School Corp. (Iowa 1902)
Kreatz v. St. Cloud School District (Minn. 1900)
Kreatz v. St. Cloud School District (Minn. 1901)

This list shows which later cases cite this one. It does not say how they treated it, and no review of that has been done. Not a substitute for Shepard’s or KeyCite — verify before relying.

Opinion of the Court

Gilpillan, C. J.

It is conceded that the express contract by two of defendant’s trustees with plaintiffs, for the purchase of the articles to recover the value of which this action is brought, was not binding upon the defendant, because not made or authorized at a meeting of the trustees as a board. In Currie v. School-District, 35 Minn. 163, (27 N. W. Rep. 922,) it wa.s decided that such contracts must be authorized by the board at a meeting called for the transaction of such business after due notice to all its members. The plaintiffs must recover, if at all, on an implied undertaking of the district to pay for the goods, arising from its having received and used them. As the two trustees could not, without being authorized at a meeting of the board, bind the district by express agreement to purchase and pay for the goods, they could not, without such authority, by anything *97they might do or direct to be done, ratify any such previous agreement. They could not do indirectly what they could not do directly. But if the goods were received and used for the benefit of the district under such circumstances and for such length of time as to raise the presumption that it was with the common consent of the district, or perhaps with the unanimous consent of the trustees, the law would impose on the district the obligation to pay for them.

The court below finds that, by direction of the two trustees, the goods were received, placed in the school-house, and used for about three weeks, until the school term closed. Afterwards some of the articles were used by direction of the clerk of the district, and other of the articles were used from time to time, but by whose direction does not appear. Part of this use was after the legal voters of the district at its annual meeting had expressly repudiated the acts of the two trustees. There is nothing in these facts necessarily leading to the presumption that the goods were used, or any part of them, with the common consent of the district or of the trustees.

Order affirmed.

Case-law data current through September 30, 2026. Source: CourtListener bulk data.