Brunswick School, Inc. v. Town and Borough of Greenwich
| Decision Date | 10 June 1914 |
| Citation | 88 Conn. 241,90 A. 801 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | BRUNSWICK SCHOOL, Inc., v. TOWN AND BOROUGH OF GREENWICH. |
Case Reserved from Superior Court, Fairfield County: Gardiner Greene, Judge.
Action by the Brunswick School, Incorporated, against the Town and Borough of Greenwich. On reserved questions. Judgment for defendant.
Augustus S. Houghton, of New York City, for plaintiff. Wilbur S. Wright, of Greenwich, for defendant.
The plaintiff is a private corporation having capital stock, organized under the general corporation laws of this state, and located in the town of Greenwich, where it conducts a day school for the instruction of boys ranging in age from 6 to 18 years. Its certificate of incorporation states that the purposes to be promoted and carried on by it are—
"to establish, maintain and conduct a private school and provide and furnish suitable grounds and buildings therefor and to make all proper contracts in connection therewith and to do all things incidental thereto."
Since 1906 it has owned a tract of land containing about four acres, with a school building thereon situated in the town and borough of Greenwich. The municipalities, the defendants, assessed this for taxation during the years 1906 to 1911, inclusive, and, the plaintiff having failed to appeal from the assessments, and refusing to pay the taxes, filed liens to secure the payment of the taxes upon the land records of the town. This action is brought to restrain the collection of the taxes and to remove the cloud of the liens from the title. The question which we are to determine is whether this property is liable to assessment for taxation.
The plaintiff's claim is that its property is exempt under section 2315 of the General Statutes. This statute, so far as material to the present case, provides:
"The following property shall be exempt from taxation: All property belonging to the United States, or this state; buildings, with their appurtenances, belonging to any county, town, city, or borough; buildings * * * exclusively occupied as colleges, academies, churches, public schoolhouses."
The plaintiff claims that its property is exempt as a building exclusively occupied as an academy. The dictionaries are in accord in defining the word "academy" as a school or seminary of learning holding rank between a university or college and a common school, and this definition doubtless expresses the popular conception of the meaning of the word. The plaintiff's school is a private school, with no endowment. It teaches the lower or elementary grades, and also those between the elementary grades and the college or university courses. It has now about 100 pupils, whose ages range from 6 years to 18 years, a majority of whom reside in the town of Greenwich and pay an annual tuition ranging from $150 to $350 per year. They are divided into 12 classes, and the entire course occupies 12 years. This hardly satisfies the definition and popular conception of an academy. It is not a public institution devoted to secondary education and offering instruction therein to all comers, but it is a private school, calculated, manifestly, to interest only those who have the means and disposition to separate their children from the public schools, as the law permits them to do, and teaching the most primary grades as well as secondary. The plaintiff's purpose is not the charitable one of devoting its property to the public use, but to devote it to its own use. The investment of capital in the corporation is not an endowment of the capital invested, or of the building in which it is invested, to the public use. Nor does the fact that no dividends have yet been paid, as found by the court, affect the situation. Dividends may not yet have been earned, or, if earned, it may not have been thought best to declare and pay them, but have been thought best to retain them for future use in the business. The purpose of section 2315 of the General Statutes is not to exempt private property used for private purposes from taxation, but to leave untaxed, as it has been the policy of the state to do since colonial days, all property, public or private, which has been sequestered or devoted to public uses. We so held in Yale University v. New Haven, 71 Conn. 316, 42 Atl. 87, 43 L. R. A. 490, where the same language (there continued in section 3820 of the Revised Statutes of 1888) was under consideration. At page 329 of 71 Conn., at page 91 of 42 Atl. (43 L. R....
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Snyder v. Town of Newtown
...a rule of nontaxability. Arnold College etc. v. Town of Milford, 144 Conn. 206, 210, 128 A.2d 537; Brunswick School v. Town & Borough of Greenwich, 88 Conn. 241, 243, 245, 90 A. 801; St. Bridget Convent Corporation v. Town of Milford, 87 Conn. 474, 478, 88 A. 881. This policy has been in pu......
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Blodgett v. Bridgeport City Trust Co.
...case of Pomfret School v. Pomfret, 105 Conn. 456, 136 A. 88, and also what had been said in Brunswick School v. Greenwich, 88 Conn. 241. 90 A. 801, that, as a of exemption, there must be " a sequestration of the property claimed to be exempt from private and a devotion of it to public use,"......
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Bistline v. Bassett
... ... (Pomfret ... School v. Town of Pomfret, 105 Conn. 456, 136 A. 88.) ... Bussing, supra; ... Brunswick School, Inc., v. Town and Burrough of ... ...
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Behnke-Walker v. Multnomah County
...the only property, public or private, in fact exempted is such as "has been sequestered or devoted to public uses": Brunswick School v. Greenwich, 88 Conn. 241, 90 A. 801. 4. There is another reason for holding that the legislature did not intend that property owned by literary or scientifi......