Section 2.16 Effect of Suspension and Rights of De Jure or De Facto Officers

• Library: Local Government Deskbook (2017 Ed.)

C. (§2.16) Effect of Suspension and Rights of De Jure or De Facto Officers

There are times when suspension or other legal complications prevent municipal officers from performing their duties—should they be entitled to pay?

In State ex rel. Brown v. McDonnell, 280 S.W. 66, 66–67 (Mo. App. W.D. 1925), two municipal officers, Brown and Barnett, were ousted by their mayor via a quo warranto proceeding; Brown and Barnett were replaced by others—R.H. Gray and A.D. Donner—and, having been ousted, were incapable of completing their official duties. The trial court’s judgment of ouster was later overturned by the appellate court, and Brown and Barnett thereafter demanded pay for the period of their improper ouster. The court of appeals found that Brown and Barnett were “de jure officers of the city” (i.e., officers by right) who were illegally ousted, and, by virtue of their de jure status, they could not be deprived of their salaries for a period in which, by judgment of the trial court, they were prohibited from performing their duties. Id. at 68. “‘The legal right to the office carried with it the right to the salary.’” Id. (emphasis added) (quoting State ex rel. Chapman v. Walbridge, 54 S.W. 447, 449 (Mo. 1899)). As the court of appeals saw it:

relators were not removed, as that term is understood in law. What was done in respect to their attempted removal was not legally done, and, therefore, was without legal effect. Others were assigned to their duties and paid by the city. That was the city’s affair, and, if it chose to take such a course, it must bear the

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