Packet Company v. Catlettsburg
| Decision Date | 01 October 1881 |
| Citation | 105 U.S. 559,26 L.Ed. 1169 |
| Parties | PACKET COMPANY v. CATLETTSBURG |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
APPEAL from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Kentucky.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. David Stuart Hounshell for the appellant.
There was no opposing counsel.
This was a suit in chancery brought by the Cincinnati, Portsmouth, Big Sandy, and Pomeroy Packet Company against the Board of Trustees of the Town of Catlettsburg.
The bill is very inartifically drawn, and its allegations very imperfectly present some of the questions which, by the brief of counsel, it is supposed to have raised. It alleges the complainant to be a corporation, owning a large number of steamboats engaged in the navigation of the Ohio River, and making frequent landings at the public wharf of the town of Catlettsburg, on the Kentucky side of that river. That upon each of said landings they were subjected to an illegal tax proportioned to the tonnage of each of said boats, amounting, between Jan. 1, 1870, and April 30, 1877, to an aggregate sum of $5,092. Parts of the ordinance of the town under which this tax was collected, and of the statute of Kentucky supposed to authorize the ordinance, are set out in the bill. This ordinance is alleged to be void as a regulation of commerce, and as laying a duty of tonnage forbidden by section ten of the first article of the Constitution. The bill then alleges that the tax is excessive and beyond a reasonable charge for the use o the wharf by the boats of the complainant, and that the amount already collected exceeds the cost of erecting and preserving the wharf.
An amended bill was also filed, which does not materially affect the matters in issue.
The thirty-first section of the act of the Kentucky legislature of Jan. 28, 1868, incorporating the town of Catlettsburg, authorizes the board of trustees 'to erect, make, and repair wharves and docks, and to regulate and fix the rate of wharfage thereat; to regulate the stationing or anchoring of vessels or boats or rafts within the town limits, and the depositing freight or lumber on the public wharves.'
The ordinances of the town complained of are the following, enacted Feb. 23, 1871:——
'The following rates are established as charges upon steamboats and other water-crafts landing at the public landing of Catlettsburg, Ky.: On transient steamboats, $1 for every landing; on the largestsized regular packets, over 100 tons, custom-house measure, $1 for landing; and on all steamboats under 100 tons burthen, fifty cents for each landing; for all store-boats or trading-boats, $1 for each landing, and if they remain more than one day, fifty cents per day for each day they remain; and for each wharf-boat used for the purpose of wharfage and commission, $10 per month.'
And another, adopted by said board of trustees May 5, 1873, in the following words:——
'That the public landing on the Ohio River, between Division and Main Streets, is hereby appointed and established as a steamboat landing, and all steamboats arriving at the town of Catlettsburg shall land at the wharf situate as aforesaid between Division Street and Main Street, and at no other point within the corporate limits of the town of Catlettsburg, except by the written consent of the wharfmaster of said town.
'That for any violation of the foregoing section the owners, controllers, or masters of any boat so violating shall be jointly and severally liable to pay a fine of $10 for each offence, which may be recovered by warrant in the name of the Commonwealth of Kentucky for the use of the Board of Trustees of the town of Catlettsburg.
'It is hereby made the duty of the wharfmaster to enforce this ordinance, and to report and prosecute all violations thereof.'
The prayer of the bill is for an injunction restraining the defendants from the collection of all taxes from the complainant's boats while landing at the natural and unimproved shore of the Ohio River, and at points other than the improved landing of the defendants, between Division and Main Streets, and from the collection of all excessive taxes while landing at any point within the corporate limits, and from the enforcement of the ordinance requiring them to land at the defendants' improved wharf, between Division and Main Streets; and the original bill prayed a decree for the sums improperly exacted of complainant.
The court below held, on demurrer to the original bill, that there could be no recovery in this suit for the amount illegally exacted and paid, because an action at law was the appropriate and adequate remedy for that purpose, and in that the court was probably right.
If, however, the bill presents no ground for the injunction prayed, the prayer for recovery of a moneyed decree becomes immaterial.
The framer of the bill seems to have labored under a misapprehension of the nature of the transaction in calling the demands made of the complainant taxes. We can see nothing in the ordinances intended to impose a tax upon anybody. The bill, as we have said, is not very clear in its statements of the manner in which this money was paid or collected. It must, however, have been paid for the use of defendants' wharf or improved landing-place, in which case it is complained of as an excessive charge, or it must have been paid as a penalty for landing at other points than between Division and Main Streets in violation of the ordinance. In neither case is there anything in the nature of a tax.
The effort of the pleader undoubtedly is tob ring the case within the constitutional prohibition of a tax upon tonnage.
If, however, the trustees of the town had a right to compensation for the use of the improved landing or wharf which they had made, it is no objection to the ordinance fixing the amount of this compensation that it was measured by the size of the vessel, and that this size was ascertained by the tonnage of each vessel. It is idle, after the decisions we have made, to call this a tax upon tonnage. Cannon v. New Orleans, 20 Wall. 577; Packet Company v. Keokuk, 95 U. S. 80; Packet Company v. St....
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