Memphisco v. Taxing District of Shelby Co Tenn
| Decision Date | 26 November 1883 |
| Docket Number | GAS-LIGHT |
| Citation | 27 L.Ed. 976,3 S.Ct. 205,109 U.S. 398 |
| Parties | MEMPHISCO. v. TAXING DISTRICT OF SHELBY CO., TENN |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Henry Craft, George Gantt, and Josiah Patterson, for plaintiff in error.
J. B. Heiskell, for defendant in error.
This is a writ of error to the supreme court of Tennessee. The question presented is whether the statute of the state under which the defendant assessed a license tax of $250 against plaintiff in error is void, because it violates the contract found in the charter of the company. This charter was enacted November 20, 1851, and, after giving the name of the new corporation and the names of the corporators, it refers for the rights, privileges, powers, and restrictions of the company to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sections of an act incorporating the Nashville Gas-light Company, passed November 21, 1849, and declares that those sections, not inconsistent with the first section of this act, shall shall apply to the Memphis Gas-light Company as fully and completely as though the same were fully set forth and incorporated. For any contract of exemption from taxation we must therefore look to the provisions of those sections in the charter of the Nashville Company. These sections contain the usual powers necessary for the successful conduct of the business of the company, its organization, its shares of stock, mode of payment, laying pipes in the street, and the like, and after a careful examination of them we are unable to see anything whatever which expresses a contract for any limitation of the power of the legislature to tax the company or its property. Such was the opinion of the supreme court of Tennessee, delivered on rendering the judgment to which this writ of error is taken. And though this court is bound for itself to inquire in every such case as this whether there existed a contract which might be be impaired, on which subject the court has very recently, at the present term, collated the authorities in the case of Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Palmes, ante, 193, we are unable to discover any reason for dissenting from the opinion of the supreme court of Tennessee on that point.
The section of the charter on which plaintiff's counsel mainly rely as showing a contract is the fifth section, which reads as follows:
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