Error
from Jefferson District Court.
ACTION
by The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company
against Levi Wilhelm, as treasurer, and George Davis, as
sheriff of Jefferson county, to restrain the collection of
certain taxes. Upon the filing of the petition, a temporary
injunction was allowed by the district judge of Jefferson
county. On June 24, 1884, the plaintiff filed the following
amended petition (omitting court and title):
"Plaintiff
complains of the said defendants, and for its cause of action
says, that it is a corporation duly organized and existing
under and by virtue of the laws of the territory and state of
Kansas; that plaintiff is and was at all times hereinafter
mentioned the owner of a line of railway and other personal
property, in said county of Jefferson and state of Kansas
that at the time required by law, said property was assessed
by the officers duly authorized thereto, in the county of
Jefferson, for the year 1882, at the sum of $ 232,000.86
that its said property in school district number 85, in said
county, was assessed in said year at the valuation of $
23,362.67; that its said property in school district number
24 was assessed, in the year aforesaid, at the valuation of $
24,142.57; that at the time required by law, the board of
county commissioners in the year 1882 levied a tax of 12 1/2
mills, in said school district number 85, for a building
fund; that at the time required by law, the board of county
commissioners of said county levied a tax for the year 1882
of three mills, in said school district number 24, for a
library fund; that at the time required by law, the board of
county commissioners of said county levied a tax of two mills
upon all the taxable property of said county for said year
for a poor-fund, in addition to the ten mills levied for
current expenses, the said county having less than five
million dollars of taxable property; that the assessed
valuation of all the taxable property in said Jefferson
county for the year 1882 was the sum of $ 3,217,000.31; that
the assessed valuation of all the taxable property in school
district number 24, in said county, for the year 1882, was
the sum of $ 71,447; that the taxes assessed as aforesaid, as
and for a poor-fund, would raise a sum greatly in excess of
the sum of $ 500, were never submitted to a vote of the
people, or authorized by a vote of the people of said
Jefferson county at any general election at a poll open for
that purpose; that plaintiff, at the time required by law
paid into the county treasury of the said county the sum of
ten mills on its assessed valuation in said school district
number 85 for a building fund, and also the sum of one-half a
mill on its assessed valuation in school district number 24
in said county for a library fund, the same being all the
taxes legally levied upon its said property for said purpose
but it refused to and still doth refuse to pay the said
excessive levy of two and one-half mills in school district
number 85 for said building fund, and two and one-half mills
in said school district number 24 for a library fund, and
said levy of two mills upon its property in said Jefferson
county for a poor-fund, for the reason that the same is
illegal and not authorized by law; that the said illegal
levies amounted, upon the assessed valuation of
plaintiff's property as aforesaid, in school district
number 85 as aforesaid, to the sum of $ 58.40, in school
district number 24 as aforesaid $ 60.35, and upon its
assessed valuation in said county as aforesaid the sum of $
464, making a total of $ 582.75; that in all previous years
there was levied by the board of county commissioners of the
said county for the current expenses of any one of said years
a tax of one per cent. or more on the dollar of the valuation
of the taxable property in said county. And plaintiff further
says, that the said levy of two mills upon all the taxable
property in said county for the said year, in addition to the
levy of ten mills for the current expenses of the said
county, is illegal and void; that such excessive levy of two
mills over and above the ten mills on the dollar of the
valuation of the taxable property of the said county was
never submitted to or authorized by a direct vote of the
electors of the said county; that no levy of a tax for the
said year 1882, for the current expenses of the said year, in
excess of ten mills on the dollar of said valuation of the
taxable property in said county, was...
