Planters' Fertilizer & Chemical Co. v. Board of Assessors for Parish of Orleans

• Decision Date: 26 March 1906
• Docket Number: 15,035
• Citation: 40 So. 1035,116 La. 667
• Parties: PLANTERS' FERTILIZER & CHEMICAL CO. v. BOARD OF ASSESSORS FOR PARISH OF ORLEANS et al
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court

40 So. 1035

116 La. 667

PLANTERS' FERTILIZER & CHEMICAL CO. v. BOARD OF ASSESSORS FOR PARISH OF ORLEANS et al

No. 15,035

Supreme Court of Louisiana

March 26, 1906

Appeal from Civil District Court, Parish of Orleans; John St. Paul Judge.

Action by the Planters' Fertilizer & Chemical Company against the board of assessors for the parish of Orleans and others. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.

George Hitchings Terriberry, for appellant board of assessors.

John Fowle Crosby Waldo, Asst. City Atty., for appellant City of New Orleans.

Denegre & Blair and Henry Hansell Chaffe, for appellee.

OPINION

BREAUX C.J.

Plaintiff, a corporation located at Shrewsbury, parish of Jefferson, claims that its property is exempt from municipal and parish taxation.

The contention is that it is employed exclusively in the manufacture of fertilizers and chemicals, and it avers that it employs five hands.

Its establishment costs about $ 128,000.

Plaintiff as a manufacturer of fertilizers makes its return to the state board of agriculture, stating the brand of fertilizers it manufactures, and it receives a license or certificate to do and carry on the business of a manufacturer of fertilizers.

It commenced to operate last year (the first year of its existence) when the business season was half over.

Plaintiff claims that it is exempt from taxation in the parish of Jefferson and in the city of New Orleans as well, wherein it has its domicile.

Plaintiff has a certain amount deposited in bank at its place of domicile, which the assessor has assessed.

It is this amount for which plaintiff specially claims exemption in the city of New Orleans.

The defendants answered plaintiff's demand and controverted its claim to exemption from municipal taxes of the city of New Orleans.

The judgment appealed from by the defendant is favorable to the exemption claimed by plaintiff.

We have met with no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that plaintiff is employed in the manufacture of fertilizers and chemicals, for beyond question it changes the condition of certain elements and ingredients into new and useful products.

The manufacturer combines articles and works them up into entirely new and useful shape.

The word "manufacture" has been defined substantially as the operation of making or producing an article for use from raw or prepared materials by giving these materials new form, qualities, properties, or combinations.

The products manufactured by plaintiff fall within the terms of that definition. It combines ingredients and by its process elaborates them into a new product to fertilize the lands.

To assist in determining that it is a manufactured product, it may serve a purpose to state that which it is not. For instance, a manufacturing process does not consist in roasting anything, nor in mixing or grinding products or things, such as the mixing of teas, the roasting of coffee, or the grinding of coffee, which has been held not to be a manufacturing process.

The plaintiff's work consists in elaborating ingredients into a new form. It produces sulphuric acid, acid phosphate, and other acids, and uses them in its process of manufacturing a fertilizer. That operation of the products of its factory which is not a fertilizer, the testimony states, is a chemical change or new combination employed in the process of chemistry.

There is no question but that the plaintiff as a manufacturer is exempt, but the extent of the exemption has given rise to argument at the bar and in the briefs.

The establishment of plaintiff is in one parish and its domicile is in another, at which plaintiff finds it convenient to deposit the amounts earned by its business, and, as we understand, needful to defray its expenses.

These amounts have been assessed as money loaned on interest and credits: $ 8,000 in possession, $ 1,500, as shown by the assessor's statement.

As relates to the law under which the exemption is claimed, for convenience of reference we reproduce the article of the Constitution on the subject of exemption. ^[1]

Defendants urge that the amount before mentioned is not protected by exemption; that the article which exempts manufacturers from parochial and municipal taxation exempts the taxes assessed in the parish in which the factory is located; and that, the establishment of this factory being in the parish of Jefferson, it is exempt in that parish, but not in the city of New Orleans.

We construe the article cited literally, and are of the view that parishes and municipalities have no authority to collect taxes from a manufacturer whose establishment is located in one parish and its domicile in an adjoining parish. The separating line of the parishes does not have the effect of doing away with the exemption. Manufacturers' products continue exempt...