Mathewson v. Bean

WORKS, P. J.

The complaint in this action, consisting of but one count, alleges the official capacity of plaintiff as Chief of the Division of Labor Statistics in one of the governmental departments of the state; that defendant Bean was at a certain election a candidate for county supervisor ; that defendant Frazer was. an organizer of election campaigns; that Bean and Frazer employed one Leon M. Aldrich and sixty-six other persons to assist in Bean’s campaign and to perform certain special services in connection therewith, each of said sixty-seven persons at a compensation of a certain amount, and that there is due to them all the lump sum of $4,301.66, although a list at the end of the pleading shows the amount due to each of these persons, the largest of these specific sums being $500 and the smallest fifteen dollars; that none of the sixty-seven persons is financially able to employ counsel and that each has assigned his claim to plaintiff for the purpose of collection, pursuant to a duty incumbent upon plaintiff under the law; that demand has been made upon defendants for the payment of the “sums” mentioned in the list, but that payment has been refused. The prayer of the complaint is for the lump sum of $4,301.66.

A demurrer was interposed to the complaint, upon both general and special grounds. The demurrer was sustained without leave to amend and judgment accordingly went for defendants. Plaintiff appeals.

In disposing pf the cause we shall consider only the question whether the complaint states a cause of action. The salary of the office to which Bean aspired was the sum of |5,000 a year and the term was four years. Section 3 of the so-called Purity of Elections Law (Act 2262, Deering’s Gen. Laws 1923, p. 837; Stats. 1907, p. 671, as amended),

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which counsel concede applies to the election at which Bean stood as a candidate, provides in part that for the purposes for which the sixty-seven were employed “no sum of money shall be paid and no expense shall be incurred directly or indirectly or on behalf of a candidate, whether before, during, or after an election ... at which he is a candidate, in excess of a maximum amount following, that is to say: if the term of the office for which the person is a candidate be . . . for more than three years, and not more than four years, twenty per centum of the amount of one year’s salary of the office ...”