Hittinger v. City of Boston

• Decision Date: 27 February 1885
• Citation: 139 Mass. 17,29 N.E. 214
• Parties: Thomas S. Hittinger v. City of Boston[1]
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

139 Mass. 17

29 N.E. 214

Thomas S. Hittinger v. City of Boston^[1]

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

February 27, 1885

Argued November 13, 1884

Plaintiff was engaged in the business of cutting, storing, and selling ice. He lived at Belmont, where he voted and paid taxes on personalty. He occupied an office in Boston for the transaction of business, and had warehouses for the storing of ice, both at Fresh pond, in Cambridge, and Forge pond, in Westford. All his machinery was at his store-houses, and in the town where they were situated, and all ice was cut and stored there. His office in Boston was a back room, up two flights of stairs, where he kept his contracts, letters, and bank notices, and employed a clerk. No ice nor samples were kept in Boston. He employed several men at his warehouses, and communicated therewith by telephones and telegraph. Ice was mostly delivered from his storehouses on railroad cars, but occasionally in wagons, and the accounts were sent to the Boston office, where all payments were made.

Suffolk.

Contract to recover the amount of a tax assessed upon personal estate of the plaintiff for the year 1883, and paid under protest. The case was submitted to the Superior Court, and, after judgment for the plaintiff, to this court, on appeal, upon agreed facts, in substance as follows:

The plaintiff, on May 1, 1883, was an inhabitant of Belmont where he voted and paid taxes upon his poll and all his personal property. His business was that of cutting, storing and selling ice at wholesale, chiefly in large quantities for export, or for use in this or other States. He sold only such ice as he cut and stored himself. He neither cut, stored, nor sold ice at Belmont. He owned large ice-houses near railroads, on the shores of Fresh Pond, in Cambridge, and Forge Pond in Westford, in which he stored the ice cut from said ponds (both being great ponds), and in each of which he had, on said May 1, a quantity of ice stored. He had a steam-engine, boiler, machinery, and ice tools in his ice-houses in said city and town, which were only used for cutting the ice and storing it in said houses. He had a place of business in Boston, where he employed a clerk, and at which his books were kept, and where his contracts for the sale of ice were usually made, his letters and bank notices received, and his business principally transacted; and his business cards and bill-heads bore that address. The plaintiff's place of business was up two flights of stairs, and was a back room about twenty feet square, one corner of it being partitioned off into a private office by a board partition. He had no other place where he carried on traffic in ice. He had no ice stored in Boston, and kept no samples there. Purchasers were not in the habit of going to look at the ice before buying it.

No business was usually transacted at Cambridge, except such as was essential to the cutting, storing, and delivery of the ice, pursuant to orders from the office in Boston. He had six or seven men constantly employed at the Cambridge ice-houses and one at the Westford houses, and many more at each of said places during the ice-cutting season. There was a telephone between his place of business in Boston and the Cambridge houses, by which he sent orders for the delivery of ice, and other communications, and he was in the habit of using the railroad telegraph between Boston and Westford for similar purposes. The ice was mostly delivered upon railroad cars, but to some extent upon wagons sent by purchasers. All accounts kept at these places were sent daily, or frequently, to be entered...