## Facts

- The Village of Brown Deer enacted multiple ordinances annexing portions of the Town of Granville.
- The City of Milwaukee pursued competing municipal boundary changes, including consolidation with the Town of Granville, creating overlap between the consolidation area and territory claimed by Brown Deer’s annexations.
- Brown Deer’s annexation petitions relied on signatures and assessed valuations of landowners within the annexation area to satisfy statutory thresholds.
- One annexation petition included the assessed valuation of Evert Container Corporation (ECC) and was signed on ECC’s behalf by its president, Charles Evert.
- Evert was ECC’s president, majority shareholder, and a director; he signed without a formal board resolution or unanimous written consent authorizing the signature at the time.
- The record reflected that ECC’s board met infrequently, Evert commonly acted for the corporation in major matters, and ECC later ratified his act of signing the petition.
- Milwaukee challenged Brown Deer’s annexations by attacking the sufficiency of the annexation petitions, including Evert’s authority to bind ECC, and Brown Deer argued Milwaukee lacked standing to raise such objections.

## Issues

1. Whether Milwaukee had standing to challenge the validity of Brown Deer’s annexation ordinances and the sufficiency of the underlying annexation petitions.
2. Whether a corporate president’s signature on an annexation petition, made without formal board authorization but later ratified and consistent with corporate practice, constitutes valid corporate assent for statutory annexation purposes.
3. Whether alleged technical defects tied to internal corporate formalities invalidate an annexation when the corporate owner’s assent is otherwise shown.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Milwaukee had standing to challenge Brown Deer’s annexations and to litigate whether petition signatures met statutory requirements.
- The court rejected Milwaukee’s argument that ECC’s signature was invalid due to lack of formal corporate authorization at the time of signing.
- The court treated ECC’s subsequent ratification and Evert’s role and customary authority within the corporation as sufficient to bind ECC to the petition.
- The court upheld the challenged Brown Deer annexations against the corporate-authorization attack, leaving intact the principle that any overlapping consolidation could take effect only in territory not subject to prior valid annexations.

## Legal Principles

- A municipality whose boundaries, tax base, or governmental interests are directly affected by another municipality’s annexation has standing to contest the annexation’s statutory validity.
- Corporate assent to an annexation petition may be established through an officer’s signature when the officer has actual or apparent authority, or when the corporation later ratifies the act.
- Ratification can cure a lack of formal authorization for a corporate officer’s execution of an annexation petition when the corporation’s conduct confirms assent and no internal corporate dispute is presented.
- Annexation petition requirements are applied to ensure genuine owner consent and compliance with statutory prerequisites; purely technical objections grounded in internal corporate procedure will not defeat an annexation where corporate consent is substantively shown.
- When annexations and consolidations overlap, earlier valid annexations have priority, and a consolidation operates only to the extent consistent with those outstanding priorities.

## Conclusion

The court permitted Milwaukee to litigate the validity of Brown Deer’s annexations but held that ECC’s inclusion on the annexation petition was not defeated by internal corporate-formality objections where the corporate president acted as the controlling figure and the corporation later ratified the signature; accordingly, the annexations stood against that challenge, with any consolidation effective only outside areas covered by prior valid annexations.


Village of Brown Deer v. City of Milwaukee, 114 N.W.2d 493 (Wis. 1962)