Boise Artesian Hot Cold Water Company, Limited v. Boise City

• Decision Date: 05 April 1909
• Docket Number: No. 131,131
• Citation: 213 U.S. 276,29 S.Ct. 426,53 L.Ed. 796
• Parties: BOISE ARTESIAN HOT & COLD WATER COMPANY, LIMITED, Appt., v. BOISE CITY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

213 U.S. 276

29 S.Ct. 426

53 L.Ed. 796

BOISE ARTESIAN HOT & COLD WATER COMPANY, LIMITED, Appt.,

v BOISE CITY.

No. 131.

Argued March 17, 1909.

Decided April 5, 1909.

Messrs. Richard H. Johnson, Richard Z. Johnson, and Edgar Wilson for appellant.

[Argument of Counsel from page 277 intentionally omitted] Messrs. William E. Borah, Charles M. Kahn, Charles P. McCarthy, John J. Blake, and Charles C. Cavanah for appellee.

[Argument of Counsel from page 278 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Moody delivered the opinion of the court:

The appellant, a West Virginia corporation, brought in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Idaho, this bill in equity against Boise City, a municipal corporation. There was a demurrer to the bill, which, upon consideration of the merits of the case set forth therein, was sustained by the judge of the circuit court, and the bill dismissed. The company appealed directly to this court. The facts set forth in the bill and exhibits, and the relief and grounds of relief claimed, so far as necessary to develop the point decided, may conveniently be stated in narrative form.

The company was incorporated for and is engaged in supplying the city and its inhabitants with water for municipal and domestic purposes. It had acquired the property, franchises, rights, and privileges of certain individuals and corporations, who had been, from time to time, granted by ordinance of the city the privilege of laying and maintaining pipes in the streets and supplying through them water for municipal and domestic uses. The company conducted its business by virtue of these ordinances, and has invested large sums of money. The ordinances need not be set forth in detail, and it is enough to say that the company contends that they are franchises for a term of not less than fifty years, and constitute a contract incon- sistent with the license fee or tax hereafter referred to, while the city contends that they are mere permissions, revocable at any time. The rates are fixed by commissioners, acting under the authority of a law of the state, and are to remain in force three years from the date of their establishment. After the fixing of the rates, and before the expiration of the three years, on the 31st day of May, 1906, the city enacted an ordinance requiring that the company 'hereafter pay to said Boise City, on the first day of each and every month, a monthly license of $300, for the privilege granted . . . to lay and repair water pipes in the streets and alleys of said city.' The ordinance then made a demand for the monthly payment of said license, and directed the city clerk to notify the company of the requirements of the ordinance.

The main object of the bill is to obtain an injunction against the enforcement of this ordinance, upon the grounds: (1) That other corporations, associations, and individuals using the streets and alleys of the city for various purposes are not required to pay a license, and therefore there was, by the ordinance, a denial of the equal protection of the laws; (2) that the city, in pursuance of its claim that the ordinances grant only a revocable permission to occupy the streets, threatens and intends to impose further burdens and assessments, and threatens to remove the pipes and the works from the city; (3) that the city has presented monthly bills and has brought an action at law in the state court to recover the amount alleged to be due on account of the license fee imposed, and that there is therefore danger of a multiplicity of suits; (4) that the ordinance has cast a cloud upon the company's franchises and right to supply water to the city and its inhabitants, and thereby depreciated the value of the company's property, impaired its credit, embarrassed its business, and confiscated its property; (5) that the ordinance impairs the obligation of the contract made by the ordinances granting the rights, privileges, and franchises; (6) that the enforcement of the ordinance would deprive the company of its property without due process of law and abridge its privileges and immunities granted by the 14th Amendment; (7) and that the ordinance violates the Constitution and laws of the state.

A subordinate object of the bill is to recover from the city certain amounts due on account of water supplied to fire hydrants, which the city declines to pay, disputing its liability so to do.

The decree of the court below, dismissing the bill, proceeded upon a consideration of the merits of the controversy between the parties. We do not enter upon that subject, because there is a deeper question which seems to us decisive of the case. That question is whether the plaintiff is entitled, on the allegations of its bill, to relief in equity in the Federal courts.

It is obvious that the rights of which the company seeks to avail itself are rights cognizable in a court of law, and not rights created only by the principles of equity. The sum of the company's contentions is that the imposition of the license fee was illegal, unconstitutional, and void. All these contentions are open in a court of law. It is a guiding rule in equity that, in such a case, it will not interpose where there is a plain, adequate, and complete remedy at law. This rule at an early date was crystallized into statute form by the 16th section of the judiciary act [1 Stat. at L. 82, chap. 20] (Rev. Stat. § 723, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 583), which, if it has no other effect, emphasizes the rule and presses it upon the attention of courts. New York Guaranty & I. Co. v. Memphis Water Co. 107 U. S. 205, 214, 27 L. ed. 484, 487, 2 Sup. Ct. Rep. 279. It is so well settled and has so often been acted upon that no authority need be cited in its support, though it must not be forgotten that the legal remedy must be as complete, practicable, and efficient as that which equity could afford. Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co. 172 U. S. 1, 11, 43 L. ed. 341, 346, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 77.

A notable application of the rule in the courts of the United States has been to cases where a demand has been made to enjoin the collection of taxes or other impositions made by state authority, upon the ground that they are illegal or unconstitutional. The decisions of the state courts in cases of this kind are in conflict, and we need not examine them. It is a mere matter of choice of convenient remedy for a state to permit its courts to enjoin the collection of a state tax, because it is illegal or unconstitutional. Very different considerations arise where courts of a different, though paramount, sovereignty, interpose in the same manner and for the same reasons. An examination of the decisions of this court shows that a proper reluctance to interfere by prevention with the fiscal operations of the state governments has caused it to refrain from so doing in all cases where the Federal rights of the persons could otherwise be preserved unimpaired. It has been held uniformly that the illegality or unconstitutionality of a state or municipal tax or imposition is not of itself a ground for equitable relief in the courts of the United States. In such a case the aggrieved party is left to his remedy at law, when that remedy is as complete, practicable, and efficient as the remedy in equity. And the rule applies as well where the right asserted is by way of defense. Phoenix Mut. L. Ins. Co. v. Bailey, 13 Wall. 616, 623, 20 L. ed. 501, 503.

In order to give equity jurisdiction, there must be shown, in addition to the illegality or unconstitutionality of the tax or imposition, other circumstances bringing the case under some recognized head of equity jurisdiction, before the remedy by injunction can be awarded. The leading case on the subject is Dows v. Chicago, 11 Wall. 108, 20 L. ed. 65. In that case the plaintiff sought to enjoin the collection of a tax levied upon shares of the capital stock of a national bank on the ground that the levy was unconstitutional under the state law, and that the property was not within the jurisdiction of the state. This court declined to pass upon the validity of the tax, saying, through Mr. Justice Field (p. 109):

'The illegality of the tax and the threatened sale of the shares for its payment constitute of themselves alone no ground for such interposition. There must be some special circumstances attending a threatened injury of this kind, distinguishing it from a common trespass, and bringing the case under some recognized head of equity jurisdiction before the preventive remedy of injunction can be invoked. It is upon taxation that the several states chiefly rely to obtain the means to carry on their respective governments, and it is of the utmost importance to all of them that the modes adopted to enforce the taxes levied should be interfered with as little as possible.

* * * * *

'No court of equity will, therefore, allow its injunction to issue to restrain their action, except where it may be necessary to protect the rights of the citizen whose property is taxed, and he has no adequate remedy by the ordinary processes of the law. It must appear that the enforcement of the tax would lead to a multiplicity of suits, or produce irreparable injury, or, where the property...