Harris v. City of Water Valley

• Decision Date: 11 February 1901
• Citation: 29 So. 401,78 Miss. 659
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: GIDEON HARRIS ET AL. v. CITY OF WATER VALLEY

29 So. 401

78 Miss. 659

GIDEON HARRIS ET AL. v. CITY OF WATER VALLEY

Supreme Court of Mississippi

February 11, 1901

October 1900

fro the circuit court, second district, of Yalobusha county. HON Z. M. SPEPHENS, Judge.

Harris and another, appellants, were prosecuted for and convicted of a violation of an ordinance of the city of Water Valley, the appellee. The prosecution was begun before the police justice of said city, appealed thence to the circuit court, and, upon conviction in the circuit court, the appellants appealed to the supreme court. The opinion otherwise states the case.

Judgment reversed and case remanded.

Brewer & Wilson, for appellants.

Since the adoption of the code of 1892, and the failure of the city to pass an ordinance declining to come in under the chapter on municipalities, of which the court will take judicial notice, it forfeited the old charter, and the code chapter is its charter, and under the present law it has no authority to tax butchers or to impose a privilege tax exceeding one-half the state privilege tax on meat markets. Porter v. Water Valley, 70 Miss. 560, was decided under the old charter.

Kimmons & Kimmons, for appellee.

The appellants are not prosecuted, as their attorneys seem to think, for failure to pay a privilege tax; they are proceeded against for maintaining a meat market without a license. Full power is given the city to regulate the vending of meats and to prohibit the establishment of markets and market places without permission of the municipal authorities. Code 1892 § 2935; 1 Dillon on Mun. Corp. (3d ed.), sec. 380; Porter v. City of Water Valley, 70 Miss. 560. The case last cited passed upon and adjudged valid the ordinance now in question.

OPINION

TERRAL, J.

The appellants, Harris and White, were prosecuted in March, 1900 for selling by retail, within the city of Water Valley, fresh meats, mutton, beef and pork, etc., without a license from the city. They had a state license for carrying on a meat market, which, in the city of Water Valley, a city of less than five thousand inhabitants, is fixed at $ 5, and they offered the city authorities $ 2.50 for a city license, which latter sum the city refused to receive, but demanded $ 20 license fee. That city previous to the adoption of the annotated code, exercised its prerogatives under a charter which authorized it to fix, at its discretion, the amount of the license to be paid for...