City of Havre de Grace v. Havre de Grace & Perryville Bridge Co.

• Decision Date: 10 April 1924
• Docket Number: 39.
• Citation: 125 A. 704,145 Md. 491
• Parties: MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF HAVRE DE GRACE v. HAVRE DE GRACE & PERRYVILLE BRIDGE CO.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

125 A. 704

145 Md. 491

MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF HAVRE DE GRACE v. HAVRE DE GRACE & PERRYVILLE BRIDGE CO.

No. 39.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

April 10, 1924

Appeal from Circuit Court, Harford County; Wm. H. Harlan, Judge.

"To be officially reported."

Action by the Mayor and City Council of Havre de Grace against the Havre de Grace & Perryville Bridge Company. From judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals. Reversed, and new trial awarded.

Argued before THOMAS, PATTISON, URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT, and DIGGES JJ.

John S Young, of Bel Air, and Frederick Lee Cobourn, of Havre de Grace, for appellant.

Stevenson A. Williams, of Bel Air, and Thomas H. Robinson, of Baltimore (Fred. R. Williams, of Bel Air, on the brief), for appellee.

THOMAS J.

This suit was brought on March 8, 1923, in the circuit court for Harford county by the mayor and city council of Havre de Grace against the Havre de Grace & Perryville Bridge Company a corporation having its principal office in said city, to recover municipal taxes levied for the years 1920 and 1921 upon the owners of shares of the capital stock of said company who resided in said city, or who were nonresidents of the state of Maryland.

After the institution of the suit, the receivers for said company were, at their instance, made parties defendant, and filed a demurrer to the declaration on the ground that the company was exempt under chapter 535 of the Acts of 1908 from the payment of all county and municipal taxes. The court below overruled the demurrer because the act referred to was a private act to change the name and amend the charter of said company, of which the court could not take judicial notice and that the proper way to raise the question of the exemption claimed under that act was by a plea setting up the act. Thereupon the receivers filed a plea alleging the exemption of the company from the payment of such taxes and setting out the act in full. To this plea the plaintiff demurred, but the court overruled the demurrer, whereupon the plaintiff filed replications alleging: (1) That the act of 1908 had been repealed as to the exemption contained therein by a public general law, and had not been in force for more than ten years; (2) that the act of 1908 had, to the extent of said exemption, been repealed, and that ever since the Acts of 1914, c. 841, such taxes had been levied and, with the exception of the taxes for the years 1920 and 1921, had been paid by said company without protest; and (3) that said act of 1908, to the extent that it attempts to exempt said company from the payment of such taxes, is invalid because it does not comply with the requirements of section 29 of article 3 of the Constitution of Maryland. The defendant traversed these replications, and upon the issue joined the case was submitted to the court without a jury. The judgment being in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff has brought this appeal.

The only exception in the record is to the refusal of the court below to permit the plaintiff to prove that such taxes had been levied ever since the year 1914, and, except the taxes for the years 1920 and 1921, had been paid without protest.

It is apparent that the important question in the case is whether chapter 535 of the Acts of 1908 does exempt the appellee from the payment of the taxes sued for, which question the court below, in overruling the plaintiff's demurrer to the plea, determined in favor of the defendant.

The act is entitled "An act to change the name and amend the charter of the 'Havre de Grace and Perryville Bridge Company of Harford County,' a corporation formed under the General Laws of the State of Maryland." By section 1 the name of the corporation was changed to the "Havre de Grace and Perryville Bridge Company," and it was given "perpetual succession," power to sue and be sued, to make and adopt a constitution and by-laws and to amend the same, and all the powers granted to it by the general incorporation laws of the state. It further authorized it to "purchase, acquire, erect, maintain and operate a bridge across the Susquehanna river, as is set forth in its articles of incorporation, from the city of Havre de Grace, in Harford county, to the town of Perryville, in Cecil county," to "issue as full paid and nonassessable its stock or any increase or increases thereof in payment for land, bridge, bridges or other property at a valuation agreed upon," and to issue negotiable bonds and to secure the same by mortgage on its property and franchises; and section 1 then provided that in case a sale was made under such mortgage "the purchaser or purchasers thereunder, pursuant thereto, or his or their survivor, survivors, representatives, or assigns may, together with associates, if any, form a new corporation, [and] it thereupon shall become vested with all the powers, property and franchises thereof owned and possessed by the said 'Havre de Grace and Perryville Bridge Company,' and a certificate of the formation of the said new corporation shall be made, executed, acknowledged and recorded as at present certificates of incorporation are directed to be made, executed, acknowledged and recorded by article 23 of the Code of Public General Laws of Maryland of 1904, and that said company is hereby exempted from the payment of any and all county and municipal taxes." Section 2 of the act expressly authorized the Havre de Grace & Perryville Bridge Company to acquire the railroad bridge between Havre de Grace and Perryville formerly used by the Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington Railroad Company as part of its line, to reconstruct or have said bridge reconstructed for use as a tollbridge, and to operate and maintain the same, provided said tolls should not exceed the tolls the Conowingo Bridge Company was authorized by its charter, chapter 217 of the Acts of 1858, to demand. It also authorized said company to connect the ends of said bridge with the streets and public highways of Havre de Grace and Perryville, to erect tollhouses, lodges for bridge keeper, and other buildings necessary for the operation of the bridge, and to acquire, by purchase or condemnation, property for the necessary approaches to the bridge from the public highways of Harford and Cecil counties.

It was said in the case of Appeal Tax Court v. Gill, 50 Md. 377:

"It is sufficient to say, the bonds assessed in this case do not come within the terms of the exemption; and it is an unyielding rule of law, that exemptions

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