Royal Mfg. Co. v. Mayor and Common Council of City of Rahway

• Decision Date: 11 November 1907
• Parties: ROYAL MFG. CO. v. MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL OF CITY OF RAHWAY.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

67 A. 940

75 N.J.L. 416

ROYAL MFG. CO.

v. MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL OF CITY OF RAHWAY.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Nov. 11, 1907.

(Syllabus by the Court)

Certiorari by the Royal Manufacturing Company against the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Rahway to review an assessment. Dismissed on condition.

Argued June term, 1907, before GARRISON and SWAYZE, JJ.

Tennant & Haight, for prosecutors. F. V. Dobbins, for the city.

SWAYZE, J. The writ in this case is directed to the municipality and the receiver of taxes, and brings up an assessment for taxation for 1906. The return shows merely an assessment upon an original valuation of $15,000, subsequently changed to $49,800. The depositions show that this change was made by the county board of taxation, and the defendants put in evidence a judgment of the state board of equalization affirming the assessment upon the valuation fixed by the county board.

The question to be determined is one of procedure—whether the proper remedy of the prosecutors was not to bring up the judgment of the state board of equalization. In considering that question, it is advantageous to examine the prior legislation and decisions.

The tax act of 1846 (Gen. St. p. 3289, pl. 49) expressly enacted that the decision of the commissioners of appeals, to whose powers the county boards have succeeded, should be final and conclusive, and this court held that their action was subject to revision only if made upon erroneous principles. Van Vorst v. Quaife, 23 N. J. Law, 89. The Legislature then passed the act of March 26, 1852 (P. L. p. 526; Gen, St. p. 3390), which made it our duty to amend an assessment of taxes removed by certiorari if it appeared to the satisfaction of the court that the amount or value of taxable property for which any person was assessed was too great. Under this act the court reviewed the valuation (Howell v. Metz, 31 N. J. Law, 365; Howell v. Cornell, 31 N. J. Law, 324; Trumbull v. Elizabeth, 39 N. J. Law, 249), and would determine disputed questions of fact, when the purpose of the investigation was the affirmance or the reversal in whole or in part of the tax imposed (Conover v. Davis, 48 N. J. Law, 112, 2 Atl. 667).

In 1891 (Gen. St. p. 3344) the Legislature created the state board of taxation. The act was before this court in Elizabeth v. New Jersey Jockey Club, 36 N. J. Law, 515, 44 Atl. 207, and it was held that earlier legislation authorizing a review of the facts by the court had been superseded by the act of 1891, which, by its eighth section, made the decision of the state board of taxation final and conclusive; that all the court could consider was whether there was any error of law in the decision brought up by the writ; that in determining that question the only pertinent facts were those which were before the state board and upon which its decision was based; and that even those facts would be considered only so far as might be necessary to determine whether there was legal evidence upon which its finding might be supported. This was followed by Newark v. North Jersey Street Railway Co., 68 N. J. Law, 486, 53 Atl. 219, in which it was also held that in determining whether legal rules were violated by the state board it should be required to certify the ground of its determination, not the testimony from which those grounds were to be inferred; and that only in case of its failure to do so should other evidence thereof be received.

These cases did not decide that the act of 1852 had been superseded by the provisions of the act of 1891 creating the state board. The reasoning of the opinions is directed only to the effect of the act of 1891 upon that section of the certiorari act which authorized the court to determine disputed questions of fact in tax matters, and it was probably in consequence of these decisions that the word tax was dropped from that section of the certiorari act when it was revised in 1903 (P. L. 1903, p. 346, § 11).

There is nothing to indicate that the court was of the opinion that the act of 1852 had been repealed by the act of 1891,...