The petition could lose its motive force only when a legally qualified council passed upon it, and either rejected it or enacted an annexation ordinance. What it produced was, by the school district's own admission, nothing, a nullity, an abortive ordinance. But here the petition, when first presented, did not serve its purpose it did not procure an ordinance. However, in that case the confession and warrant were effective to produce a judgment, which *418 was valid, and was amended by leave of court. Practically, it describes a legal document which has fulfilled its purpose and has hence spent its force and lost its motive power, as where a judgment has once been entered upon a confession and warrant, a subsequent judgment cannot be entered even if the purpose is to correct an error in the first judgment. Literally it means, "having discharged his duty." 37 C.J.S. "Functus officio" is a robust, sonorous Latin phrase without precisional legal connotation. It developed that two councilmen had not filed certificates of election and oaths of office, and, pursuant to an agreement of counsel for the borough and the school district, the court below, for that reason only and without passing upon the merits of the proceeding, decreed that the ordinance was "set aside and declared inoperative, of no effect and null and void." Nineteen days later the same petition, supplemented with a new affidavit, was again submitted to the council which enacted the ordinance which is the subject of this litigation.Īppellant's first contention is that the second ordinance is invalid because it was founded upon a petition which had become functus officio when the court invalidated the first ordinance. A petition in proper form and containing the signature of the required number of freeholders of the territory to be annexed was presented to the borough council which enacted an ordinance on July 19, 1948, a certified copy of which was duly filed in the court below. 519, § 425, as amended and revised by the Borough Code of July 10, 1947, P.L. The School District of Derry Township appealed from an order of the court below sustaining an ordinance *417 of the Borough of Derry annexing adjacent land in the township, enacted pursuant to the General Borough Act of May 4, 1927, P.L. Shaw, with him Scales & Shaw, for appellee. *416 Before HIRT, RENO, DITHRICH, ROSS and ARNOLD, JJ.
0 kommentar(er)
