Frederick Elec. Light & Power Co. v. City of Frederick City
| Citation | 36 A. 362,84 Md. 599 |
| Parties | FREDERICK ELECTRIC LIGHT & POWER CO. v. MAYOR, ETC., OF FREDERICK CITY ET AL. |
| Decision Date | 06 January 1897 |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from circuit court, Frederick county.
Bill by the Frederick Electric Light & Power Company against the mayor and aldermen of Frederick city and Lewis M. Nixdorff city tax collector. From a decree dismissing the bill complainant appeals. Affirmed.
Argued before BRYAN, FOWLER, BRISCOE, PAGE, and BOYD, JJ.
Frank L. Stoner, for appellant.
P Frank Pampel, for appellees.
A bill in equity was filed by the appellant to enjoin the mayor and aldermen of Frederick city, and the city tax collector, from collecting certain taxes alleged by them to be due. In 1882 the legislature passed an act, which is now article 11, § 266, of the Public Local Laws, whereby it authorized the mayor and aldermen, "whenever it shall seem to them expedient for the encouragement of the growth and development of manufactures and manufacturing industry in the city of Frederick, to provide by general ordinance for the * * * exemption from taxation for municipal purposes upon any mechanical tools or implements, whether worked by hand or steam, or other motive power, machinery, manufacturing apparatus, or engines, owned by any individual, firm or corporation in said city, and properly subject to valuation and taxation therein, which said tools, implements, machinery, apparatus or engines shall be actually employed and used in the business of manufacturing in said city," etc. On February 4, 1891, they passed an ordinance providing "that the machinery and manufacturing apparatus of all manufacturing industries established within the corporate limits of Frederick within two years next succeeding the date of the passage of this ordinance and actually employed or used in the business of manufacturing in Frederick city" shall be exempt from taxation for five years. The bill alleges that the appellant located its manufacturing plant in Frederick city within the prescribed time, and has since then been engaged in the manufacture of electricity. The appellees filed an answer in which they allege that the plant of the appellant is not included in the exemption, as it is not comprehended within the term "manufacturing industries." The controversy, therefore, raised by the pleadings, is whether an electric light company is a manufacturing industry, within the meaning of that ordinance. In determining this question, we do not deem it necessary to attempt a scientific discussion of what electricity is. Nor do we think we can gather much assistance from encyclopedias, dictionaries, or other books endeavoring to define it. Whether an electric light company can properly be said to "manufacture" electricity, or whether it simply brings into action that which is already made, we need not determine. The mayor and aldermen of Frederick have, by virtue of a supposed authority granted them by the legislature, undertaken to exempt certain property from municipal taxation, and we are simply to determine whether the appellant can reasonably be said to be within the meaning and intention of this legislation. In doing that, we should not be too technical, or wholly governed by the strict definitions of words used by the legislature; but we must ascertain the purpose of the law, so far as it is disclosed in the statute and ordinance, and then see what its language means to the average mind,--keeping in view the general principles of law applicable to all statutes and ordinances which are intended to exempt from taxation property which would otherwise be liable to it.
The purpose of the law is declared by the ordinance to be "for the encouragement of the growth and development of manufactures and manufacturing industries" in Frederick city. The exemption embraces "the machinery and manufacturing apparatus of all manufacturing industries" established in the city within two years. Now, would the term "manufacturing industries" strike the mind of the average man, when used in the above connection, as including an electric light plant? We mean by the "average man" one of fair and ordinary intelligence, such as a legislature or town council might be composed of, but not one who looks at everything from a technical or scientific standpoint. In speaking of the manufacturing industries of a town or city, we would not ordinarily include the electric light plant, if it had one, as most towns of much less size than Frederick have. In advertising a city or town as a desirable place for manufactures, the fact that it was lighted with electricity might be mentioned, just as good roads or streets, pure water, healthy climate, or other attractions, might be; but, if a list of its manufactures were to include the electric light plant among them, it would be looked upon as an effort to enlarge the number beyond what the facts justified. If a company proposed to manufacture armatures, lamps, or other electrical appliances, one would think of it as a manufacturing industry, but not so of an ordinary electric plant for furnishing electricity. But if an electric light plant is conceded to be, in a certain sense, a "manufacturing industry," it is not necessarily such a one as this ordinance meant. Can it be contended that if the owner of one of the hotels or other large houses of the city of Frederick has a private electric plant to light his own property, it is exempt from taxation, because it is a manufacturing industry? The fact that the appellant "lights houses by electricity, for compensation," cannot give it more right to exemption, if as much, than one who uses it only for his own purposes, and the one would be a manufacturing industry as well as the other. Companies furnishing artificial gas have been held to be manufacturing companies, but would the plant of a person who makes his own gas be exempt, as a manufacturing industry, under this ordinance? It seems to us clear that the ordinance does not have such a broad meaning. It would be impossible to enumerate all the manufacturing industries that may have been intended, but it is evident that they were such as manufacture articles that are to be made, handled, sold, etc., and would necessitate the employment of labor and capital that would benefit the community at large. They were intended to be such as might go elsewhere, not such as must locate in Frederick. An electric light company to light the streets and houses of that city must go there, and not to Baltimore, or other places offering inducements to manufacturers. The object of the ordinance was to encourage, as we have already seen, "the growth and development of manufactures and manufacturing industries." How could that be accomplished by exempting an electric light plant? It is a rare thing to see a town of one-third the size of Frederick city without one. Is it reasonable to suppose that it was thought necessary to exempt from municipal taxation the plant, in order to induce an electric light company to establish one in Frederick? Could it ever have been within the contemplation of the mayor and aldermen of Frederick who passed that ordinance that any electric light company that came there within two years would be exempt from taxation for five years? Webster defines "industry," when used in this connection, to be ...
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