Minnesota Supreme Court, 1906

Town of Partridge v. Ring

Minnesota Supreme Court · Decided October 26, 1906 · Jaggard

99 Minn. 286; 109 N.W. 248; 1906 Minn. LEXIS 420 (Minnesota Reports)

Counsel

W. E. Dodge, for appellant., Pitzhugh Burns and S C. Olmstead, 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 1967, among the opinions in this site’s citation index.

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Cases that cite this one

3 later published cases cite this decision.

Town of Dell Grove v. Helwig (Minn. 1967)
BOARD OF HEALTH, TOWN OF LAKE v. Village of Warroad (Minn. 1965)
State Bank v. Town of Goodland (Minn. 1909)

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

JAGGARD, J.

The town board of the town of Partridge authorized certain counsel to bring an action for the plaintiff and respondent against the defendant and appellant. A money judgment was rendered for the plaintiff. A motion was made' by the defendant within a year afterwards praying that the judgment be set aside on the ground that the town board had not authority to institute or maintain the action and that the electors of the town only had such power. Plaintiff’s attorneys presented counter affidavits showing that subsequently to the entry of the judgment the electors ratified the employment of plaintiff’s attorneys and the maintenance of the action, including its culmination in the money judgment. The court denied defendant’s motion.- Defendant took this appeal.

*287It may be conceded that the action of the town board in employing counsel to institute the action was void, and that this act, void in its inception, could not have been validated in its culmination. The electors, however, had the power to direct the institution of the controversy. Subdivision 3, § 625, R. R. 1905. What they could have originally directed they could subsequently ratify. In this case the ratification is not, in effect, the subsequent approval of the act of the town board, but the authorization of the employment of plaintiff’s counsel and of their conduct of the lawsuit. If there had been no original retainer, and counsel had merely volunteered, the electors could have given validity to their acts by subsequent consent. The authority of the town board was not less than no authority. • No question is raised as to the sufficiency of the form of the ratification.

Order affirmed.

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