Pierce Oil Corporation v. Hopkins
| Decision Date | 05 July 1922 |
| Docket Number | 6008. |
| Citation | 282 F. 253 |
| Parties | PIERCE OIL CORPORATION v. HOPKINS, County Clerk, et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Boyle & Priest, H. S. Priest, R. E. Moloney, and G. T. Priest, all of St. Louis, Mo., and Poe, Gannaway & Poe, of Little Rock Ark., for appellant.
J. S Utley, Atty. Gen., and Elbert Godwin, and William T. Hammock Asst. Attys. Gen., for appellees.
Before CARLAND, Circuit Judge, and TRIEBER and MUNGER, District judges.
In this suit the appellant sought a perpetual injunction against the enforcement of an act of the Arkansas Legislature, and appeals from a decree dismissing its bill.
Section 1 of the act in question (Acts Ark. 1921, p. 685) is as follows:
'That all persons, firms or corporations who shall sell gasoline, kerosene or other products to be used by the purchaser thereof in the propelling of motor vehicles, using combustible type engines over the highways of this state, shall collect from such purchaser, in addition to the usual charge therefor, the sum of one cent (1c) per gallon for each gallon so sold.'
Other sections of the act make it the duty of every such seller of gasoline or other products to register with the county clerk and in each month to file an itemized report of the sales for the preceding month and of the amount of the tax due from the seller and then at once to pay the amount of the tax to the county treasurer. The seller is made personally liable for the amount of the tax in case of a sale without collecting the tax. It is made a misdemeanor for a seller to fail to file the monthly statement or to fail to pay over the tax due. One-half of the money so collected in any county is to be credited to the county road fund, and the other half is to be remitted to the state treasurer for the benefit of its highway improvement fund.
It was established by the pleadings and evidence that the plaintiff sells about 3,500,000 gallons of gasoline in Arkansas yearly, of which 75 per cent. is sold to purchasers who use it in internal combustion engines to propel vehicles over public highways in the state, and the amount of the tax on such sales would exceed $25,000 per annum. The plaintiff is at an expense of about $600 a month in preparing and filing the required reports and in collecting and remitting the amount of the tax.
The plaintiff claims that this act of the Legislature is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and of several provisions of the Constitution of Arkansas. The particular claim of violation of the Fourteenth Amendment is that plaintiff is deprived of its property without due process of law, because, without its consent and without just compensation, it is made liable for the debts of another.
In the trial court the plaintiff claimed the act violated section 5 of article 16 of the state Constitution of Arkansas which reads as follows:
The contention of plaintiff was, first, that the tax was levied upon gasoline as personal property, and lacked the requisite uniformity because it was laid upon gasoline sold for use in engines of vehicles used on the highways and was not laid upon gasoline sold for other purposes; and, second, if the tax was levied upon a privilege it was not such a privilege as was contemplated by this portion of the Constitution. The act was also claimed to be void for uncertainty. Since the entry of the decree in this case, the Supreme Court of Arkansas, in the case of Standard Oil Co. v. Brodie, 239 S.W. 753, decided these contentions and held the law to be valid, and appellant concedes the authority of that decision as to the alleged violations of the state Constitution.
The claimed violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of...
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...Co., 165 Ark. 172, 263 S. W. 775. Defendant cites: Pierce Oil Corp. v. Hopkins, 264 U. S. 137, 44 S. Ct. 251, 68 L. Ed. 593; Id. (C. C. A.) 282 F. 253; Askren v. Continental Oil Co., 252 U. S. 444, 40 S. Ct. 355, 64 L. Ed. 654; Bowman v. Continental Oil Co., 256 U. S. 642, 41 S. Ct. 606, 65......
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