Anniston City Land Co. v. State

• Decision Date: 27 November 1913
• Citation: 64 So. 110,185 Ala. 482
• Parties: ANNISTON CITY LAND CO. v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

64 So. 110

185 Ala. 482

ANNISTON CITY LAND CO. v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Alabama

November 27, 1913

Appeal from Circuit Court, Calhoun County; Thomas W. Coleman, Jr. Judge.

Proceedings by the State for the assessment of back taxes against land belonging to the Anniston City Land Company. From a judgment subjecting the land to taxation, the company appeals. Reversed and remanded.

See also, 160 Ala. 253, 48 So. 659.

Blackwell & Agee, of Anniston, for appellant.

R.C Brickell, Atty. Gen., W.L. Martin, Asst. Atty. Gen., and W.C Tunstall and W.P. Acker, both of Anniston, for the State.

SAYRE J.

This case originated in an assessment for taxation made in the year 1906. The assessment was for the taxes of the then current year, and for taxes which had escaped in the years 1903-05. There was a contest before the court of county commissioners, and an appeal by the property owner to the circuit court. This is the second appeal to this court. 160 Ala. 253, 48 So. 659. On behalf of the owner some propositions are advanced which have not had consideration heretofore.

Section 91 of the Constitution provides that the Legislature shall not tax lots in incorporated cities or towns to the extent of one acre, with the buildings thereon, when same are used exclusively for schools. The old "Anniston Inn" was let by the owner for use as a school building during the years for which the state claims taxes; but it now appears that it was not used during those years exclusively for school purposes. It was used as a school; but it also appears to have been used as a lodging and boarding house. The evidence shows to our satisfaction that persons having no connection whatever with the school, and who were not members of the families of the master or his faculty, other families, occasional visitors to Anniston, delegates to conventions, and baseball players, from time to time, in term time and in vacation, lodged and boarded in the building. This use was customary and continuous. Indeed, it appears that no respectable white person was ever during the time denied accommodation in the building. In State ex rel. v. Johnston, 214 Mo. 656, 113 S.W. 1083, the court, declaring the property there in question exempt on facts which will be hereafter stated, said that: "If the incidental use *** does not interrupt the exclusive occupation of the building for school purposes, but dovetails into or rounds out those purposes, then there could fairly be said to be left an exclusive use in the school on which the law lays hold." Appellant relies upon that case. We can find no objection to the general principle declared. It leaves us, however, to determine what other uses are so incidental as not to interrupt an exclusive use for school purposes, and that determination must depend upon the facts of the individual case. In the Missouri case, above, there was a boarding school for boys, and the proprietor and members of his family, his wife and children, occupied rooms in the school building. Adult members of the family took part in the work of the school either as instructors or as assistants in its necessary domestic economy to which even the minor children were shown to have contributed at times in some ways. In Willard v. Pike, 59 Vt. 202, 9 A. 907, parts of the building were let to teachers as dormitories or for residence. In School v. Gill, 145 Mass. 139, 13 N.E. 354, surplus products of the farm, kept for the supply of the school, were sold; but the proceeds were applied to the uses of the school. This statement of the facts in those cases will suffice to distinguish them from this case. Here, without doubting that the building, or rather, perhaps, the larger part of it, was used in good faith for educational purposes during the period in question, we are of opinion that the different uses to which we have referred, though they must have been induced by the personal convenience or interest of the lessee, cannot in any just and proper sense be said to have proximately contributed to the uses of education. They were incidental of course, and it may be that the space so occupied was not needed for the school; but the property unit was indivisible, and they interfered effectually with that exclusive use for school purposes which the Constitution exacts as a condition of exemption from sharing the burdens of the state. The claim of exemption for the building was properly disallowed for the year 1906.

Appellant next contends that the property was assessed for the years 1903, 1904, and 1905, and for that reason was not subject to assessment as an escape. That part of the assessment appellant would now avoid on the ground last stated purports to be as for an escape for the years mentioned. In the assessments made in due course in each year prior to 1906 by the owner, and accepted by the assessor and the commissioners' court, the property was described and valued as follows: "Block 145, that part not exempt $1,000.00." Block 145 contained about four acres of land in the city of Anniston, and upon it was the school building, the old "Anniston Inn," covering about one acre. The fair taxable value of the entire block, including the building, all question of exemption apart, all along was $25,000, as the...