Arkansas Building Loan Association v. Madden
Decision Date | 04 December 1899 |
Docket Number | No. 68,68 |
Citation | 20 S.Ct. 119,175 U.S. 269,44 L.Ed. 159 |
Parties | ARKANSAS BUILDING & LOAN ASSOCIATION (Perpetual), Appt. , v. J. W. MADDEN, Secretary of State |
Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
By an act of the state of Texas approved April 3, 1889 (Tex. Laws 1889, chap. 78, p. 87), foreign corporations for pecuniary profit, with some exceptions not material here, desiring to do business in the state of Texas, were required to file with the secretary of state a duly certified copy of their articles of incorporation and obtain a permit to transact business in the state, paying a fee therefor, the permit not to be issued for a period longer than ten years from the date of the filing. By an act approved May 11, 1893 (Laws 1893, chap. 102, § 5, p. 158), it was provided
Section 17 of article 1 of the Constitution of Texas, ratified February 17, 1876, provided: 'No person's property shall be taken, damaged, or destroyed for, or applied to, public use without adequate compensation being made, unless by the consent of such person; and, when taken, except for the use of the state, such compensation shall be first made, or secured, by a deposit of money; and no irrevocable or uncontrollable grant of special privileges or immunities shall be made; but all privileges and franchises granted by the legislature, or created under its authority, shall be subject to the control thereof.'
And article 8:
a corporation of the state of Arkansas, filed its charter with the secretary of the state of Texas, and paid the fee required by the act of 1889, as well as the franchise tax of $10 required to be paid by the act of 1893, and received a permit to carry on its business in Texas for ten years.
The provisions of the acts of 1889 and 1893 were carried into the Revised Statutes of the state of Texas of 1895. By an act approved April 30, 1897, Tex. Laws 1897, chap. 104, p. 140), and an act approved May 15, 1897 (Tex. Laws 1897, chap. 120, p. 168), these provisions were amended so as, among other things, to increase the annual franchise tax theretofore required, to graduate it according to the capital stock of the corporation, to provide that the failure to pay it should work a forfeiture of the right to do business in the state, and that the secretary of state should declare such forfeiture. The taxes imposed by these amendments were less upon domestic corporations than upon foreign corporations. Thereafter the Arkansas Building & Loan Association offered to pay the secretary of state the $10 required by the prior law as the franchise tax for the ensuing year, but the secretary refused to accept that sum and to give to the company the franchise tax receipt therefor, and demanded the larger sum required by the law of 1897, which amounted to $205.
The company then filed a bill in the circuit count of the United States for the western district of Texas against the secretary of state of Texas, setting up the foregoing facts, and charging that the act of 1897 was void because in contravention of the Constitution of Texas, and of the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States and of the Fourteenth Amendment to that instrument, and praying an injunction against the secretary of state restraining him from the collection of said alleged illegal tax, and from declaring complainant's permit and right to do business in the state forfeited by failure to pay the tax, and for general relief. To this bill defendant demurred, assigning as grounds that it set up no cause of action; that it disclosed that complainant had an adequate remedy at law; and that it showed that the demand...
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