City of Columbia v. Niagara Fire Ins. Co.

• Citation: 154 S.E.2d 674,249 S.C. 388
• Decision Date: 08 May 1967
• Docket Number: No. 18644,18644
• Parties: The CITY OF COLUMBIA, Appellant, v. NIAGARA FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, Respondent.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of South Carolina

Page 674

154 S.E.2d 674

249 S.C. 388

The CITY OF COLUMBIA, Appellant, v. NIAGARA FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, Respondent.

No. 18644.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

May 8, 1967.

John W. Sholenberger, Edward A. Harter, Jr., Columbia, for appellant.

Herbert, Dial & Windham, Columbia, for respondent.

LIONEL K. LEGGE, Acting Associate Justice:

The City of Columbia brought this action to recover $1,247.02, plus penalty, allegedly due it by Niagara Fire Insurance Company as part of Niagara's business license fee for the year 1963 under the city's license ordinance. Niagara having answered, denying the alleged liability, the case was heard on the pleadings and an agreed statement of facts before the Honorable Louis Rosen, Presiding Judge, from whose order dismissing the complaint the city has appealed.

Section 1 of the ordinance provides that every person, firm or corporation engaged or intending to engage in any business in the City of Columbia 'shall obtain and pay for on or before the first day of April, a license therefor * * *.'

Section 3 provides that 'where the amount of license is dependent upon the volume of business done, the computation shall be on the basis of the volume of business done during the preceding year * * *.'

Section 4 prescribes, in the case of fire insurance companies, a license fee of two (2%) per cent on all gross premiums collected through offices or agents located in the city or collected on policies written on property located in the city, wherever the premiums are collected.

During the year 1962 Eagle Fire Insurance Company did business in the City of Columbia, having paid for and been issued a license for that year based upon gross premiums collected by it in 1961. During 1962 it collected gross premiums amounting to $62,350.78. Effective as of 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 1962, it sold its Columbia business to Niagara under a Reinsurance and Assumption Agreement, to which we shall later refer. Eagle did no business in Columbia after December 31, 1962, and sought no license in 1963.

Niagara did business in Columbia during 1962, paying for that privilege the required license fee based upon gross premiums collected by it in 1961. It continued to do business there in 1963, and for that year it paid a license fee based upon gross premiums collected by it in 1962. The city contends in this action that for the privilege of doing business in 1963 Niagara should pay, in addition, a license fee of two (2%) per cent of the gross premiums collected by Eagle during 1962. It bases that contention upon the Reinsurance and Assumption Agreement of December 31, 1962, between Niagara and Eagle, under which Niagara then acquired Eagle's Columbia business and assumed Eagle's policy liability on all insurance risks of that business in force as of 11:59 p.m. of that date or to become effective thereafter.

The respondent, Niagara, contends here, as it did in the trial court, that the issue should be resolved from the terms of the ordinance alone, and that the Reinsurance and Assumption Agreement is irrelevant. The trial judge rejected that contention, and correctly so in our opinion. For it seems to us that consideration of the effect of that agreement upon the volume of Niagara's 1963 business is essential to a realistic appraisal of Niagara's status as a 1963 licensee under the ordinance.

The license ordinance being a tax measure, its scope may not by implication be extended beyond the clear import of its language. Meredith v. Elliott, 247 S.C. 335, 147 S.E.2d 244; Adams v. Burts, 245 S.C. 339, 140 S.E.2d 586. Niagara contends that under this rule we should construe Sections 3 and 4 as limiting its liability for 1963 license tax to two (2%) per cent of gross premiums collected by it in 1962, and should not take into consideration the additional volume of its 1963 premium collections resulting or to result from its acquisition of Eagle's business on the last day of 1962.

The true guide to statutory construction is not the phraseology of an isolated section or provision, but the language of the statute as a whole considered in the light of its manifest purpose. In applying the rule of strict construction the courts may not give to particular words a significance clearly repugnant to the meaning of the statute as a whole, or destructive of its obvious intent. Every technical rule as to construction of a statute is subservient to and must yield to the expression of the will of the legislature, since all rules of statutory construction have for their sole object the discovery of the legislative intent and are valuable only insofar as in their application they aid the courts in their endeavor to ascertain that intent. Pickens v. Maxwell Bros. & Quinn, 176 S.C. 404, 180 S.E. 348; Creech v. South Carolina Public Service Authority, 200 S.C. 127, 20 S.E.2d 645; Brewer v. Brewer, 242 S.C. 9, 129 S.E.2d 736.

The obvious purpose of the license ordinance is to impose a tax, or license fee, upon the privilege of doing business in the city during the current year. Implicit in that purpose is the requirement that the tax be fair and nondiscriminatory. In many classes of business the license fee is calculated on gross receipts reasonably to be expected during the license year, using the amount of such receipts during the preceding year as a measure for computing the amount of the fee. In the case of fire insurance companies, it is calculated on the amount of gross premiums collected during the preceding year, that formula being based upon the presumption that the amount of premiums to be received during the license year will reasonably approximate that received during the preceding one. Basic to the purpose of the ordinance, and therefore to our interpretation of its meaning, is the fact that the volume of business for the preceding year is not the subject of the tax, but is merely a reasonably fair basis upon which to estimate the volume of such business during the license year; it is in respect of the latter that the license tax is imposed.

If, as Niagara concedes, it is reasonable to assume that the volume of gross premiums from its own business in 1962 would approximate the volume of such premiums from that business in 1963 and would therefore be a reasonable base upon which to calculate its 1963 license tax, it is no less reasonable to assume that the volume of its 1963 premiums would be augmented by the amount of gross premiums derived from Eagle's 1962 business, which at one minute before January 1, 1963, became a part of Niagara's. And since the 1963 license tax is imposed in respect of the estimated 1963 business, it would seem that no injustice to Niagara would result from requiring it to pay a license tax calculated upon its 1963 gross premiums as so augmented. Such, we think, is the true intent and meaning of the license ordinance. To hold otherwise would be to give to it a construction...