Killion v. City of Paris
| Decision Date | 16 June 1951 |
| Citation | 241 S.W.2d 524,192 Tenn. 446,28 Beeler 446 |
| Parties | KILLION v. CITY OF PARIS. 28 Beeler 446, 192 Tenn. 446, 241 S.W.2d 524 |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
R. H. Rhodes, Paris, for complainant.
R. L. Dunlap, Jr., Dudley Porter, City Attys., Paris, for defendant.
The water works plant from which the inhabitants of City of Paris, Tennessee, receive water is owned by the City. In December 1947 the commissioners of this municipality adopted Ordinance No. 215. Its Section 1 fixes the rates to be thereafter charged the inhabitants for water. These rates are upon a sliding scale measured by the amount of water used and upward from a specified minimum charge each month. Section 2 of the Ordinance provides that seventy-five (75cents) cents of this charge shall be placed in a sinking fund to be used in payment on all the bonded indebtedness of the City amounting to a total principal of $696,000.00, and due at specified times up to fifty years.
There are two thousand customers of this municipality's Water Works System. Under Section 2 of the ordinance the City will receive from two thousand customers in fifty years the sum of $900,000.00 to pay on principal and interest of this bonded indebtedness. This indebtedness is a general obligation of the City representing nineteen outstanding bond issues issued for various municipal purposes, including water works. The ordinance authorizing these various bond issues provided for the levying of a tax on all the taxable property within the municipality for the payment of principal and interest of these bonds.
Plaintiff-in-error, Killion, filed the bill in this cause wherein he alleged the above stated facts and sought a declaring this ordinance void in its entirety or, in the alternative, in so far as it concerns this seventy-five (75cents) cents allocated to the sinking fund for the retirement of the aforestated general indebtedness of the City. This relief is sought under the assertion that because of the provision with reference to the seventy-five (75cents) cents the ordinance violates (1) Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution providing that no one shall be deprived of his property other than by the law of the land, and (2) impairs the obligation of the 'bond contracts heretofore made, thereby violating Article 1, Section 20' of our Constitution.
It is insisted that with reference to the alleged violation of Article 1, Section 8 the allocation of this 75cents of the charges made each month for water subjects a particular class only, to-wit, the consumers of water, to the burden of paying the general bonded indebtedness of the City, and relieves all other taxpayers.
Plaintiff-in-error is a customer of the water works system and is a taxpayer of the City. He does not own any of the bonds mentioned.
Upon an answer admitting all the bill's allegations of fact and denying all of its conclusions of law the Chancellor heard the case on bill and answer and held the ordinance valid in its entirety and dismissed the bill. Killion has appealed.
There is a conspicuous absence from the bill of certain allegations material to the insistences of the complainant upon whom rests the burden of establishing the facts which are prerequisite to the procuring of the relief he seeks. The bill does not allege that the rates charged by the ordinance in question are exorbitant, nor that the portion of the income allocated to the payment of the City's bonded indebtedness is not a part of the reasonable profits, if the municipality is allowed to make a profit in the carrying on of this business. Nor is there any allegation as to whether the City of Paris acquired this water works system under the authority of the statute carried in Williams' Code commencing at Section 3695.1 or whether it acquired such system independent of said statute, as it might have, City of Memphis v. Memphis Water Co., 52 Tenn. 495, 528. If acquired under the statute mentioned the surplus must be used in the improvements, extensions or additions to the system, Section 3695.14 and 3695.15, Williams' Code. But if otherwise acquired a different rule may apply as to the disposition of the surplus, in the absence of a statutory direction as to such disposition. We know of no such other statutory direction nor are we referred to any by complainant.
By reason of the absence from the bill of the aforementioned allegations the Court is not at liberty to assume that the rates charged were not reasonable; nor that the income allocated to the payment of bonded indebtedness is not from profits. Nor may it be assumed that the authority under which the City of Paris acquired these water...
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Hansen v. City of San Buenaventura
...same as a private corporation. The fact that it makes a profit does not show that the rate is unreasonable); (Killion v. City of Paris (1951) 192 Tenn. 446, 241 S.W.2d 524, 526.) (As the city has a right to make a profit in furnishing water to customers, revenues could be used to pay all th......
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Rosalind Holding Co. v. Orlando Utilities Commission
...the OUC was earning an excessive profit, or that its rates were unreasonably high for the years in issue. See Killion v. City of Paris, 192 Tenn. 446, 241 S.W.2d 524 (1951). III. WAS THE 13.5% RATE OF RETURN ON EQUITY USED BY ORLANDO UTILITIES COMMISSION IN SETTING ITS RATES SHOWN TO BE UNR......
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...other than those connected with the enterprise itself is permissible in the absence of statutory prohibition." Killion v. City of Paris, 241 S.W.2d 524, 527 (Tenn. 1951). See also 165 A.L.R. 854 ("Generally, the determination of the questions of what disposition may be made of income or ear......