Dixon v. Russell

• Decision Date: 21 May 1909
• Citation: 78 N.J.L. 296,73 A. 51
• Parties: DIXON et al. v. RUSSELL et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

73 A. 51

78 N.J.L. 296

DIXON et al.

v. RUSSELL et al.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

May 21, 1909.

Certiorari by William F. Dixon and others, executors of Martha T. Fiske, against George E. Russell and another, to review an order levying an inheritance tax. Order and levy affirmed.

McCarter & English, for prosecutor.

Theodore Backes and Edmund Wilson, Atty. Gen., for defendants.

MINTURN, J. Martha T. Fiske died testate, at Cairo, Egypt, on the 23d day of January, 1908, being a resident of the state of Rhode Island at the time of her death. Letters testamentary were issued upon her estate as a nonresident testatrix by the surrogate of New York county to the prosecutors. She was not the owner of real estate within this state, but was possessed at the time of her decease of 1,150 shares of the capital stock of the Standard Oil Company, a corporation of New Jersey, the certificates of which stock were not within this state at the time of the decedent's death. The said stock passed pursuant to the bequests contained in the will to persons and corporations not within the exemption clause of the inheritance act of this state. The executors of the deceased applied to the Standard Oil Company, at its office in this state, to transfer the said shares of stock, but the officials declined to do so upon the ground that the stock might be liable to an inheritance tax. Application was then made by the executors to the surrogate of Essex county to levy a tax on the shares for the purpose of forming a basis for an application to this court to determine the legality of the tax so fixed. The surrogate, in performance of this duty, appointed appraisers, and, upon their report levied a tax on the said shares and forwarded the same to the State Comptroller, who has since made demand upon the executors for the payment of the tax so levied. The prosecutors refused payment of the tax upon the ground of the surrogate's want of jurisdiction to assess it, and upon the ground that the act under which it was assessed is unconstitutional.

Were it not for the existence of the act of 1906 (P. L. p. 432, c. 228), the case of Neilson and Russell, 71 Atl. 286, recently determined by the Court of Errors, would be dispositive of the case at bar, as the facts in the Neilson Case were mutatis mutandis substantially similar to the case sub judici. It was thereenunciated that the tax in question was not a property tax but a succession, or transfer tax or legacy duty upon shares of stock of a New Jersey corporation, which, notwithstanding the foreign domicile of the holder, had their situs in this state; but that, notwithstanding that status, they were not subject to the inheritance tax imposed by the act of May 15, 1894 (P. L. p. 318). The act of 1906 provides the differentiating factor in the case at bar and supplies the basis for the tax in question. It is entitled "An act to amend an act entitled 'An act to tax intestates' estates, gifts, legacies, devises and collateral inheritance in certain cases,'" and by the second subdivision to the first section thereof it provides that a tax may be imposed "when the transfer is by will or intestate law of property within the state, and the decedent was a nonresident of the state at the time of his death." The prosecutors reasons synthetically considered involve two propositions, the first of which attacks the constitutionality of this act, as in contravention of article 4, § 7, par. 4, of the state Constitution, which requires every law to embrace but one object, which shall be expressed in its title, and the other that the acts of the surrogate in assessing the tax and the Comptroller in attempting to collect it are coram non judici and void for want of jurisdiction. The title of this act fairly includes the subject-matter of this litigation in specifying "legacies" as the legal term indicative of the matters with which it purports to deal. The shares of stock in question, according to the stipulation in the case, passed under a bequest contained in decedent's will, and therefore are within the meaning of the term "legacies." And as the object of the act sub judici is to impose a tax inter alia upon "legacies" not within the exemption clause of the statute, it seems manifest that the subject-matter of this controversy is plainly comprehended in the title of the act. That the title of this act is not subject to the criticism of the prosecutor in this regard is indicated by the following language of Mr. Justice Van Syckel in Walter v. Town of Union, 33 N. J. Law, 350: "The degrees of particularity which must be used in the title of the act rest in legislative...