Western Oil Refining Company v. Lipscomb
| Decision Date | 04 June 1917 |
| Docket Number | No. 168,168 |
| Citation | 244 U.S. 346,61 L.Ed. 1181,37 S.Ct. 623 |
| Parties | WESTERN OIL REFINING COMPANY, Plff. in Err., v. A. W. LIPSCOMB, Clerk, etc |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Henry Clay True and A. L. Dorsey for plaintiff in error.
Mr. Frank M. Thompson for defendant in error.
This was a suit by an Indiana corporation to recover money paid under protest as an occupation or privilege tax in Tennessee. The plaintiff had an oil refinery in Illinois and a steel barrel factory in Indiana, and was selling the products of its refinery and factory upon orders taken by traveling salesmen in its employ. For the purpose of filling orders so taken in Maury county, Tennessee, it shipped into that county from its refinery a tank car of oil and from its factory a car of steel barrels. Both cars were billed to the plaintiff at Columbia, in that county, and, after the orders from that place were filled, were rebilled to the plaintiff at Mount Pleasant, in the same county, where the orders from the latter place were filled. At both places the orders were filled directly from the cars by a traveling agent of the plaintiff and the purchase price was collected at the time,—this being what was contemplated when the orders were taken. If the order was for both oil and barrels, the oil was drawn out of the tank car into the barrels and the two were jointly delivered; and if oil alone was ordered, it was drawn from the tank car into barrels otherwise provided by the buyer. When the cars were originally shipped they contained just the quantity of oil and the number of barrels required to fill the orders from the two places, and the plaintiff intended that they should remain at Columbia only long enough to fill the orders from that place and then should be sent to Mount Pleasant, so the orders from that place could also be filled. The quantity of oil and the number of barrels required to fill the orders from Mount Pleasant were in the cars continuously from the time of the original shipment until the cars reached that place. The plaintiff had no office or local agent in Tennessee, nor any oil depot, storage tank, or warehouse in that state.
The statute, chap. 479, Acts 1909, § 4, under which the tax was exacted and paid, provides:
'Each and every person, firm, partnership, corporation, or local agent having oil depots, storage tanks or warehouses for the purpose of selling, delivering, or distributing oil of any description, and each and every person, firm, partnership, corporation, or local agent using a railroad car or railroad depots for such purpose, shall pay a privilege tax as follows.'
The objection made to the tax, as applied in the circumstances stated, was that it was a tax upon interstate commerce and therefore violative of the commerce clause of the Constitution. In the county court judgment was given for plaintiff, and this was reversed by the supreme court of the state, which held, first, that what was done up to and including the filling of the orders from Columbia was interstate commerce, and the state could not exact a privilege tax therefor consistently with the commerce clause of the Constitution (see Western Oil Ref. Co. v. Dalton, 131 Tenn. 329, 174 S. W. 1138), and, second, that what was done thereafter—rebilling and forwarding the cars from Columbia to Mount Pleasant and then filling the orders from that place—was intrastate commerce and afforded an adequate basis for exacting the tax.
Of the first part of the decision it is enough to say it is supported by a long line of adjudicated cases in this court, among them being these: Caldwell v. North Carolina, 187 U. S. 622, 47 L. ed. 336, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 229; Dozier v. Alabama, 218 U. S. 124, 54 L. ed. 965, 28 L.R.A.(N.S.) 264, 30 Sup. Ct. Rep. 649; Crenshaw v....
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