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5 cases

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Municipalities — Contracts—Extra work — Appropriation—Mordí obligation — Taxpayers suit — Equity—Injunction. 1. A city has no power to appropriate by ordinance sums of money claimed by a contractor tb be due him' for extra work, where there is no moral obligation to make such payment, and an ordinance attempting to make such appropriation will be restrained by a court of equity at the suit of taxpayers. 2. There is no moral obligation resting upon a city to pay a contractor anything additional for alleged extra work done by him in the performance of his contract, where it appears from findings of fact, sustained by evidence, that the contractor was fully paid under the terms of his contract for everything which he did. 3. A contractor made an agreement with the City of Philadelphia for the construction of a sewer. The prices fixed by the contract were for items of work completed and in place, with no additional allowance to the contractor for labor, dredging, pumping, or any work incidental to the building of the sewer. At the request of the contractor, the city assented to a- change in- the method of building a portion of the sewer. By the original contract, a section of the sewer was to be built under water, by lowering blocks of concrete upon pile heads. The contractor preferred to build a bulkhead between the two piers, pump out the water and build the sewer above water, or “in the dry.” This was accordingly done, and the contractor was paid the prices fixed in the contract for all material used in the construction of the sewer. The contractor brought suit against the city for the amount it cost him to build the bulkhead between the piers, for flumes and other incidental work necessary to build the sewer “in the dry,” and was nonsuited on the ground that the prices fixed in the original contract included all labor, machinery, materials, etc., necessary to the completion of the work, and that the contractor was not entitled to recover for work and material not entering into the construction of the sewer, but expended in incidental work in order to build the sewer “in the dry.” No appeal was taken from this decision, but thereafter councils passed an ordinance authorizing the appointment of a referee to determine whether anything was morally due the contractor, and upon the referee’s report that the amount of the claim was morally due, councils by ordinance made an appropriation for its payment. A taxpayer’s bill was filed to restrain the payment on the ground that the city was under no moral obligation to make it, and that the ordinance was invalid. Held, the court did not err in granting the relief prayed for.