Dowling v. Board of Assessors of City of Boston
| Decision Date | 16 September 1929 |
| Citation | 268 Mass. 480 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
| Parties | JOHN C. L. DOWLING & others v. BOARD OF ASSESSORS OF THE CITY OF BOSTON. |
September 9, 1929.
Present: RUGG, C.
J., CROSBY, PIERCE WAIT, & SANDERSON, JJ.
Tax, Assessment. Statute, Validity, Construction, Revision. Jurisdiction. Constitutional Law, Due process of law, Taxation. Equity Jurisdiction, Suit by ten taxable inhabitants. Municipal Corporations, Officers and agents. Public Officer. Assessors of taxes come within the descriptive terms of G.L.c. 40 Section
53, and are officers of the city or town within its provisions although at the time they are exercising the functions of public officers and in general are subject to the obligations and immunities of public officers.
The court of equity has jurisdiction under G.L.c. 40, Section 53, of a suit by ten taxable inhabitants of the city of Boston seeking to restrain the assessors of taxes of that city from raising money by a levy of a tax alleged to be contrary to law and in violation of Section
23 of G.L.c. 59 as amended by St. 1928, c. 379, Section 5, on the ground that before determining the amount of the tax levy for the year, the defendants did not deduct back taxes and the distributive share of income taxes, coming into the treasury of the city after the beginning of the year in question, from the total amount otherwise to be raised by taxation.
Punctuation is a minor, and not a controlling element in interpretation, and courts will disregard the punctuation of a statute, or repunctuate it, if need be to give effect to what otherwise appears to be its purpose and true meaning.
The deductions authorized by the second sentence of G.L.c. 59, Section 23, as amended by St. 1928, c. 379, Section 5, from the total described in the first sentence are, by the use of the word "may," couched in permissive, not mandatory, words, but with the limitation that in no event shall such deductions exceed a specified limit.
Assessors of taxes in acting in any year under said Section 23 as amended are not required, before determining the amount of the tax levy for a year, to deduct back taxes and the distributive share of income taxes, coming into the treasury of the city after the beginning of that year, from the total amount otherwise to be raised by taxation.
Section 23 of G.L.c. 59 as amended by St. 1928, c. 379, Section 5, is constitutional.
BILL IN EQUITY, filed in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Suffolk on August 14, 1929, by ten taxable inhabitants of the city of Boston under G.L.c. 40, Section 53, and described in the opinion.
The suit was reserved by Field, J., for determination by the full court.
The case was submitted on briefs. P. Nichols, for the petitioners.
F.S. Deland, Corporation Counsel, & S. Silverman, Assistant Corporation Counsel, for the respondents.
This petition by ten taxable inhabitants of the city of Boston is brought under G.L.c. 40, Section 53, to restrain the defendants, constituting the board of assessors of Boston from raising money by the levy of a tax alleged to be contrary to law. The case was reserved on the petition and answer for determination by this court. The pertinent facts thus disclosed are these: At the beginning of the fiscal year 1929 (which is the same as the calendar year) there was in the treasury of the city of Boston a sum in excess of $2,500,000 not appropriated, pledged, or otherwise devoted to any specific public use. This is termed free cash. Subsequent to the beginning of 1929, the city has received a sum in excess of $5,000,000 through the collection of taxes assessed in years prior to 1929 but not previously collected, known as back taxes and hereafter so designated, and a sum in excess of $250,000 as its distributive share of the State income tax for years prior to 1929 in addition to sums previously distributed to it from that source. The city has expended the whole or the greater part of all these sums for ordinary municipal purposes and for payment on account of appropriations arising and payable with respect to the fiscal year 1929. The defendants are about to assess the annual tax on taxable real and personal property in Boston for the year 1929, and are about to include in such assessment the entire annual appropriations and other sums required to be raised by taxation, and a certain percentage of overlay, less only (1) said amount of free cash on hand on January 1, 1929, (2) estimated receipts from departmental revenues, (3) amounts estimated to be distributed to the city by the Commonwealth from the excise taxes on corporations and from the State income taxes, all for the year 1929, (4) estimated amount to be received for poll taxes, and (5) an amount not in excess of the proceeds received from the personal property tax on motor vehicles as authorized by St. 1928, c. 379. Further allegations in the petition as conclusions of law from these facts are that the city and the defendants as public officers have no legal or constitutional right to make the tax levy (1) "for the purpose of meeting appropriations which have already been expended and extinguishing obligations which have already been met," (2) to raise money in order to restore to the treasury money already expended and thus create a surplus, or (3) without deducting from the total sum to be raised amounts received during the current year for back taxes and from the State income tax for previous years, and that the proposed tax levy will violate the constitutional guaranties against disproportionate and unreasonable assessments and against taxes for a purpose not public, art. 10 of Declaration of Rights, c. 1, Section 1, art. 4, and c. 2, Section 1, art. 11, of the Constitution of this Commonwealth, and will deprive the plaintiffs of their property without due process of law contrary to art. 14 of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The prayers of the petition are that the defendants be restrained from making the proposed assessment, A, without first deducting from the amount to be assessed (1) an amount equal to sums collected as back taxes since the beginning of the fiscal year, January 1, 1929, and (2) an amount equal to sums paid since January 1, 1929, by the Commonwealth to the city as its share from the State income taxes for years prior to 1929, or, B, in the alternative, without first deducting from the amount to be assessed, an amount equal to sums already paid by the city with respect to appropriations, expenditures and obligations of the year 1929, from the proceeds of back taxes and from sums received from the Commonwealth during 1929 as its distributive share of the State income taxes for years prior to 1929.
Question is raised as to the jurisdiction of the court to entertain the petition. There is in this Commonwealth no general jurisdiction to entertain suits by taxpayers to restrain an illegal tax levy. Such jurisdiction rests entirely on statute. Fuller v. Trustees of Deerfield Academy, 252 Mass. 258 , 259, and cases there collected. The earliest statute of that nature was St. 1847, c. 37. The jurisdiction in equity thereby conferred was confined to instances where a city or town had voted to raise by taxation, or to borrow, or to pay out of its treasury, money for unauthorized purposes. Carlton v. Salem, 103 Mass. 141 . The jurisdiction continued to be restricted to cases of a vote by the municipality as the source of the proposed abuse of corporate power until the enactment of St. 1898, c. 490. By that statute the phraseology was changed so as to authorize relief at the suit of not less than ten taxable inhabitants when a municipality or "any of its officers or agents are about to raise or expend money or incur obligations" for illegal purposes or in an unlawful manner. This was something more than a mere verbal variation in the revision of a statute, not altering its meaning, as illustrated by Main v. County of Plymouth, 223 Mass. 66 , 69, and cases there collected. It was a manifest enlargement of the scope of the preexisting statute. It made no reference to a vote of the city or town as the basis for judicial intervention. It comprehended officers and agents as well as votes of the municipality as sources of illegal conduct to be restrained. It comprised the whole gamut of illegal use of public funds and public credit, and included illegal raising of money by taxation, whether arising from the vote of the city or town or from action of its officers or agents in excess of power lawfully conferred. A wider field of relief to complaining taxpayers was created than that theretofore established. It was a new statute supplanting and changing the former in material particulars. Boston & Maine Railroad v. Billerica, 262 Mass. 439 , 449. Hecht v. Malley, 265 U.S. 144, 156. In these particulars the present form of the statute remains as it was fixed by the statute of 1898. The words of the statute authorize a petition, not only when the city or town, but also when any of its officers or agents, "are about to raise . . . money" for unwarranted purposes and in an unwarranted manner. The words "to raise money" as applied to a municipality commonly mean to raise by taxation. Minot v. West Roxbury, 112 Mass. 1 , 3. Mead v. Acton, 139 Mass. 341 , 344. Board of Supervisors of Dickinson County v. Warren, 98 Mich. 144, 146. Compare Wells v. Salina, 119 N.Y. 280, 288; and New York & Rosendale Cement Co. v. Davis, 173 N.Y. 235, 239. Assessors, like many others holding elective or appointive offices within municipalities, are often and accurately described as public officers as distinguished from agents or servants of the municipalities. They are not subject to the direction of municipalities in the performance...
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