Supreme Court Shapleigh v. San Angelo, U. San Angelo. A state, being the creator of municipal organizations, is the proper party to impeach the validity of their creation, and if it acquiesces in the validity of a municipal corporation, the corporate existence thereof cannot be collaterally attacked; this rule is recognized in Texas. An absolute repeal of a municipal charter is effectual so far as it abolishes the old corporate organization, but when the same, or substantially the same inhabitants are erected into a new corporation, whether with extended or restricted territorial limits, such new corporation is treated as in law the successor of the old one, entitled to its property rights, and subject to its liabilities; this view of the law has been accepted and followed by the Supreme Court of Texas.
The disincorporation by legal proceedings of the City of San Angelo did not avoid legally subsisting contracts, and, upon the reincorporation of the same inhabitants and of a territory inclusive of the improvements made under such contracts, the obligations of the old devolved upon the new corporation. The Texas Act of April 13, , c. Under the facts disclosed by this record, the new corporation is subject to the obligations of the preceding corporation, as existing legal obligations, in manner and form as they would have been enforceable bad there been no change of organization.
This was an action brought by Augustus F. Shapleigh, a citizen of the State of Missouri, against the City of San Angelo, a city incorporated on February 10, , under the laws of the State of Texas. The plaintiff's amended petition, filed in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Texas on March 9, , contained two counts, the the first asking judgment for the amount of certain unpaid coupons for interest on bonds issued by a municipal organization styled "the City of San Angelo," which, from January 18, , to December 15, , exercised the powers of an incorporated city within the territorial limits inclusive of all the territory afterwards embraced within the limits of the defendant corporation, and the second count seeking to recover, as money had and received to the use of the plaintiff, the amount paid by him for the bonds.
The essential allegations of the first count were that, on January 18, , the County Judge of the County of Tom Green, Texas, made an entry upon the records of the commissioners' court of the said county setting forth that the inhabitants of the Town of San Angelo, in that county, were then and there incorporated as a city, within certain described boundaries, that on the said date, the city contained more.
It was further stated that, at the fall term, , of the district court of the said county, the county attorney, at the instance of a citizen and taxpayer of the city, filed an information against the mayor and the members of the city council of said city alleging that the city was never legally incorporated, and that the defendants were unlawfully exercising the functions of such officers, and praying that the defendants might be cited to appear and show.
