Leary v. Mayor and Aldermen of Jersey City

• Decision Date: 07 January 1919
• Docket Number: No. 3,3
• Citation: 63 L.Ed. 271,248 U.S. 328,39 S.Ct. 115
• Parties: LEARY v. MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF JERSEY CITY et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

248 U.S. 328

39 S.Ct. 115

63 L.Ed. 271

LEARY

v MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF JERSEY CITY et al.

No. 3.

Argued Nov. 12 and 13, 1918.

Decided Jan. 7, 1919.

Messrs. Merritt Lane, of Newark, N. J., and John M. Enright, of Jersey City, N. J., for appellant.

Mr. John Bentley, of Jersey City, N. J. (Messrs. John Milton and Edward P. Stout, both of Jersey City, N. J., of counsel), for appellees.

Mr. Justice PITNEY delivered the opinion of the Court.

This was a suit in equity brought in the United States Circuit (afterwards District) Court for the District of New Jersey by Leary, the appellant, against the city of Jersey City and the city collector to remove a cloud upon the title held by Leary in certain lands lying beneath the waters of New York Bay adjacent to the New Jersey shore, arising from the lien asserted by the city to secure payment of certain taxes assessed against those lands and alleged by complainant to be invalid under the constitution and laws of the state and repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. The Circuit Court dismissed the bill (189 Fed. 419), the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed its decree (208 Fed. 854, 126 C. C. A. 12), and an appeal to this court was allowed.

The lands in question were granted or leased April 30, 1881, by the state of New Jersey, acting by its riparian commissioners appointed under an Act of March 31, 1869 (P. L. p. 1017), supplementary to an Act of April 11 1864 (P. L. p. 681). The recipient of the grant was the Morris & Cumings Dredging Company, a corporation of the state of New York, and this company on February 24, 1904, assigned its interest to appellant. The taxes in question were assessed annually for the years 1883 to 1905, inclusive, amounted in all to $163,392.24, and remain unpaid. The lands having been advertised for sale by the city collector to pay them, the original bill was filed to restrain such sale. Afterwards the city under an act of the Legislature known as the Martin Act, approved March 30, 1886 (P. L. p. 149), and its supplements, caused an adjustment of the taxes to be made, which was confirmed by a circuit judge, pursuant to the act. The assessment resulted in a large reduction in the amount of the taxes, fixing the aggregate burden upon appellant's land at about $108,000, including the taxes for the years 1904, 1905, 1906, and 1907, which were included in the adjustment. The adjusted taxes were made the basis of a supplemental bill herein. At the same time they were reviewed by the Supreme Court of the state upon a writ of certiorari prosecuted by the city, and were sustained by that court and by the Court of Errors and Appeals. Jersey City v. Speer, 78 N. J. Law, 34, 72 Atl. 448; Id., 79 N. J. Law, 598, 76 Atl. 1037. That review, however, did not involve the questions now raised.

In the present suit the validity of the taxes was assailed principally upon four grounds: First, that the lands were not owned by the Morris & Cumings Dredging company or by appellant in such a sense as to make them taxable in their hands under the state laws, but on the contrary remained the property of the state; second, that the lands, although within the territorial limits of the state of New Jersey, were, by the compact made in the year 1833 between that state and the state of New York, approved by Act of Congress of June 28, 1834 (4 Stat. 708, c. 126), made subject to the governmental jurisdiction of the state of New York, and that the imposition of a tax upon them under the authority of the state of New Jersey would deprive appellant of his property without due process of law in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; third, that the lands were not within the taxing district of Jersey City; and, fourth, that the lien of the taxes had expired.

Since the suit was commenced the second contention, which raised the only substantial federal question, has been decided adversely to appellant by this court in Central R. R. Co. v. Jersey City, 209 U. S. 473, 28 Sup. Ct. 592, 52 L. Ed. 896.

The third and fourth points are satisfactorily dealt with in the opinions of the Circuit Court and Circuit Court of Appeals.

The first point—whether the interest of appellant and of his predecessor in title were taxable under the laws of the state—is the one chiefly relied on in this court. It is insisted, and for the purposes of the decision we assume, that the state laws provide for taxing lands only against the owner, and not against a lessee. Hence, the crucial question on this branch of the case is whether the riparian grant under which appellant derives his title is a mere lease, as contended by him, or confers such an ownership as is taxable under the state laws; in short, whether the state or the grantee is the owner.

The legislation by which the powers of the riparian commissioners are defined is set forth in the opinion of the Circuit Court (189 Fed. 422-425), and need not be here repeated. Suffice it to say that it authorizes the making, in the name and behalf of the state, of such a grant or lease as that which was made to the Morris & Cumings Dredging Company, and which that company assigned to appellant. The...