Armstrong v. Mayor, etc., of Hagerstown

• Decision Date: 21 January 1870
• Citation: 32 Md. 54
• Parties: ALEXANDER ARMSTRONG v. THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL OF HAGERSTOWN.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

32 Md. 54

ALEXANDER ARMSTRONG v. THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL OF HAGERSTOWN.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

Jan. 21, 1870

APPEAL from the Circuit Court for Washington County.

The cause was submitted to BARTOL, C.J., STEWART, BRENT, GRASON MILLER and ROBINSON, J.

Albert Ritchie, Thomas Rowland and John Thomson Mason, for the apellant.

A K. Syester, for the appellees.

MILLER J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was an action of assumpsit by the appellees against the appellant to recover city taxes levied on certain bank-stock and other personal property of the latter. The case was submitted to the Court below upon an agreed statement of facts, in which it was admitted that the property upon which the appellant insisted the corporate authorities of Hagerstown had no right to impose a tax amounted, in bank-stock, to $7,910, and in personal securities, to $200; that the tax levied was sixty cents on the hundred dollars, and that if the Court should be of opinion the bank-stock was liable to taxation for municipal purposes, a judgment should be entered against the appellant for $47.46, and if of the same opinion as to the personal securities, a judgment for $1.20 for that also should be given, and, by the agreement, each party reserved the right of appeal to this Court. The Court decided that both were liable to taxation, and in accordance with the agreement, entered up judgment for $48.66, the amount of the two sums agreed upon. From this judgment an appeal has been taken. It is not denied that, as the amount recovered in this form of action does not exceed fifty dollars, the Court below had no jurisdiction to render this judgment. It, therefore, appears upon the face of this record that a judgment has been entered which the Court had by law no authority to render, and an error of this character going to the jurisdiction of the Court to enter up the particular judgment, is open in this Court on appeal or writ of error. Watkins vs. State, 14 Md., 412; Webster vs. Cockey, 9 Gill, 92. It is not a case to which the provisions of the Code, Art. 5, sec. 12 apply. The only action which this Court can take, is to reverse the judgment as unwarrantably pronounced by the Court below in the assumption of a jurisdiction which has been conferred upon justices of the peace, and enter here a judgment of non pros., which ought to have been the judgment of that Court.

But it has been proposed and insisted that...