Town of Tryon v. Duke Power Co.

Section 1 of the Declaratory Judgment Act, chapter 102, Public Laws of 1931, empowers courts of record within their respective jurisdictions “to declare rights, status, and other legal relations,” and section 2 has special relation to such “rights, status or other legal relations arising out of a municipal ordinance, contract or franchise,” with special relation to the construction or validity thereof; but the apparent broad terms of the statute do not confer upon the court an unlimited jurisdiction of a merely advisory nature to construe and declare the law. Before a declaratory judgment may…