Investment Company v. State Board of Equalization
| Decision Date | 20 December 1915 |
| Docket Number | BI-METALLIC,No. 116,116 |
| Citation | 239 U.S. 441,60 L.Ed. 372,36 S.Ct. 141 |
| Parties | INVESTMENT COMPANY, Plff, in Err., v. STATE BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, and Elias M. Ammons, James B. Pearee, M. A. Leddy, Roady Kenehan, and Fred Farrar, as Members, etc., et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Horace Phelps for plaintiff in error.
[Argument of Counsel from page 442 intentionally omitted] Mr. Fred Farrar, Attorney General of Colorado, and Messrs. Norton Montgomery, James A. Marsh, and George Q. Richmond for defendants in error.
This is a suit to enjoin the State Board of Equalization and the Colorado Tax Commission from putting in force and the defendant Pitcher, as assessor of Denver, from obeying, an order of the boards, increasing the valuation of all taxable property in Denver 40 per cent. The order was sustained and the suit directed to be dismissed by the supreme court of the state. 56 Colo. 512, 138 Pac. 1010. See 56 Colo. 343, 138 Pac. 509. The plaintiff is the owner of real estate in Denver, and brings the case here on the ground that it was given no opportunity to be heard, and that therefore its property will be taken without due process of law, contrary to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. That is the only question with which we have to deal. There are suggestions on the one side that the construction of the state Constitution and laws was an unwarranted surprise, and on the other, that the decision might have been placed, although it was not, on the ground that there was an adequate remedy at law. With these suggestions we have nothing to do. They are matters purely of state law. The answer to the former needs no amplification; that to the latter is that the allowance of equitable relief is a question of state policy, and that as the supreme court of the state treated the merits as legitimately before it, we are not to speculate whether it might or might not have thrown out the suit upon the preliminary ground.
For the purposes of decision we assume that the constitutional question is presented in the baldest way,—that neither the plaintiff nor the assessor of Denver, who presents a brief on the plaintiff's side, nor any representative of the city and county, was given an opportunity to be heard, other than such as they may have had by reason of the fact that the time of meeting of the boards is fixed by law. On this assumption it is obvious that injustice may be suffered if some property in the county already has been valued at its full worth. But if certain property has been valued at a rate different from that generally prevailing in the county, the owner has had his opportunity to protest and appeal as usual in our system of taxation (Hagar v. Reclamation Dist. 111 U. S. 701, 709, 710, 28 L. ed. 569, 572, 573, 4 Sup. Ct. Rep. 663...
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