South Jersey Telegraph Co. v. City of Woodbury
South Jersey Telegraph Co. v. City of Woodbury
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This writ brings up an ordinance directly affecting the prosecutor, passed by the city council of the city of Woodbury on April 18th and approved by its mayor on April 35th, 1905.
One of the reasons filed for the reversal of this ordinance is that it was not passed in accordance with the terms of the charter of the said city. The charter of the city of Woodbury (Pamph. L. 1870, p. 602) provides in section 19 that "no ordinance or by-law shall be enacted or passed by the said council unless the same shall have been introduced before the said council at a previous meeting and shall have been agreed to by a majority of said council'; but said council may, by a two-thirds vote, put any such ordinance or by-law on its final passage on the same day on which the same shall be introduced."
This result renders it unnecessary to decide the other questions that were argued, although it may not be amiss to remark that a provision in a municipal ordinance that makes it the duty of a mere executive officer to destroy property without notice to its owner and without a semblance of judicial process other than “the complaint of any person” is so extraordinary and drastic a proceeding as to suggest at once doubts as to its legality and to illustrate the propriety of the charter provision that a cooling time shall intervene between the introduction and the final passage of such municipal measures as amount to the dignity of ordinances.
For failure to observe this provision of the charter, the ordinance before us is set aside, with costs.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.