Adams v. Southern Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 18 April 1912
• Citation: Adams v. Southern Ry. Co., 58 So. 397, 176 Ala. 320 (Ala. 1912)
• Parties: ADAMS, TAX COLLECTOR, ET AL. v. SOUTHERN RY. CO.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

58 So. 397

176 Ala. 320

ADAMS, TAX COLLECTOR, ET AL. v. SOUTHERN RY. CO.

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 18, 1912

Appeal from Law and Equity Court, Marengo County; Edward J. Gilder Judge.

Bill by the Southern Railway Company against Q. S. Adams, as Tax Collector of Marengo County, and others.From a decree for complainant, defendants appeal.Reversed and rendered.

William Cunninghame, of Linden, for appellants.

Abrahams & Tayloe, of Demopolis, for appellee.

McCLELLAN J.

This appeal presents for revision only the action of the court in denying the motion of the respondents(appellants) to dissolve the injunction issued as prayed in the bill.The bill's theory is that the tax collector of Marengo county is in the act of enforcing, by a sale of property of the complainant(appellee), the collection of an alleged special road tax.Code, §§ 134, 138;Const § 215;ActsSp. Sess.1909, pp. 279, 280.It is averred, to state the substance, that, while there appears upon the minute book of the commissioners' court of Marengo county an order levying a special road tax for the year 1910 apparently the legally expressed purpose of that authorized governmental body, the court, as such, never in fact made the order for the levy; but it was transcribed upon the minutes of that body by the clerk (Code, § 3315) of the probate judge without the term of the court at which the action purports to have been taken.It is, in consequence, alleged that there was no valid levy of the special road tax, the payment of which is sought to be thus enforced.It is further averred that such purported levy of the tax is valid upon its face, and apparently casts the shadow of a statutory lien upon complainant's property that its property is about to be taken to satisfy a tax charge that in fact never had any existence; and that it will suffer irreparable injury and damage unless the law's processes the tax collector is employing are restrained by injunction to that end.

That feature of complainant's theory which rests upon the idea that the formal minutes, permanent record, of the acts of the commissioners' courtmust be entered during the term of the court at which the action is taken, is entirely untenable, as was expressly ruled in Goodson v. Dean,55 So. 1010.The act of entering such official proceedings upon the permanent records of the body is purely ministerial.L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Perkins,152 Ala. 133, 140, 141, 44 So. 602; 1 Black on Judg.§ 106.

Apart from this, however, the bill is without equity.Its object is to enjoin the collection of a tax sought to be collected for county purposes, not municipal, where, it seems from some authorities (see...