Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - UI Charter of Freedom (1942) [PAGE 61]

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60 220 111. App. 97 (1920) ; Woods v. Village of La Grange, 287 111. App. 201, 208.) In the latter case the Appellate Court of the First District said, page 208: "A municipal corporation which may sue and be sued * * * may employ an attorney to conduct such business unless restrained by its charter * * *" The statutes in force in 1869 (Statutes of Illinois, 1869, p. 755; Act of February 20, 1861, Laws of 1861, pp. 278, 220) under which the cases of Cooper v. Dela-> van, supra, was decided (Town v. Patton and Town v. Thomas were seemingly decided under the same act) gave the town the power to sue and made it liable to suit (Sec. 1, Laws of 1861, p. 218), but nowhere was the right to employ counsel expressly quoted. In numerous cases outside Illinois, however, the power to employ an attorney to appear in behalf of the town has been implied as an incident to the power to sue. Indeed, any other conclusion would be utterly absurd —leaving the corporation the subject of an attack in the courts but without power to defend itself. {City of Birmingham v. Wilkinson, 239 Ala. 199, 194 So. 548; Chrestman v. Tompkins, 5 S. W. (2d) 257 (Tex.); So. Ind. Gas Co. v. City, 12 N. E. (2d) 122; Clark v. Smith, 294 N. Y. S. 106.) In City V. Birmingham, 239 Ala. 199, the Court said at page 551 (S. W.) : "* * • admittedly the authority of a city to employ legal counsel is incident to the power to sue and be sued." In Southern Ind. Gas. Co. v. City, 12 N. E. (2d) 122, the right to employ counsel is here said to be "one of the incidental powers necessary to the execution of a granted power." In Clark V. Smith, 294 N. Y. S. 106, the Court said: "It has long been the settled law of this state. and in other jurisdictions, that a municipal corporation has implied power to employ counsel to