Seyboldt v. Town of Mt. Rainier

• Decision Date: 12 January 1917
• Docket Number: 86.
• Citation: 99 A. 960,130 Md. 69
• Parties: SEYBOLDT et al. v. MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL OF TOWN OF MT. RAINIER.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

99 A. 960

130 Md. 69

SEYBOLDT et al. v. MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL OF TOWN OF MT. RAINIER.

No. 86.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

January 12, 1917

Appeal from Circuit Court, Prince George's County, in Equity Fillmore Beall, Judge.

Suit by James M. Seyboldt and another against the Mayor and Common Council of Mt. Rainier. From a decree sustaining a demurrer to the bill of complaint and dismissing the bill, plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

Argued before BOYD, C.J., and BURKE, THOMAS, PATTISON, URNER STOCKBRIDGE, and CONSTABLE, JJ.

Gerald F. Kopp, of Baltimore, for appellants.

Ogle Marbury, of Baltimore (J. Enos Ray, Jr., of Washington, D C., on the brief), for appellee.

STOCKBRIDGE J.

The record in this case presents an appeal from a decree of the circuit court for Prince George's county, by which a demurrer to a bill of complaint was sustained, and the bill dismissed.

The scope and purpose of the bill are well set out in the opinion, which was filed in the lower court, as follows:

"The bill is filed on behalf of the plaintiffs and all other taxpayers and owners of real estate abutting on the streets of said town, and prays that the mayor and common council of Mt. Rainier may be enjoined from (1) issuing any bonds or obligations binding the town of Mt. Rainier and the plaintiff's property therein under the provisions of said charter (94 of the Acts of 1916), and (2) from issuing the bonds of town in the amounts and payable as alleged in the bill, and (3) from levying or collecting any assessment against the property of the plaintiffs under said act for the making of such improvement or for the payment of such bonds or interest or any other purpose.

"The bill sets forth at length the plaintiff's reasons for injunction, contending that the proposed assessment is unlawful and confiscatory because the act does not provide or permit a hearing with respect to assessments or benefits; that the front-foot assessment is unconstitutional; that the delegation of legislative power to the voters by requiring an election before the act goes into effect renders the act unconstitutional; that the special election to determine whether or not the sewerage system should be adopted was not properly called; that insufficient notice of the election was given; that the form of the ballot used at the election, which read for or against "water and sewerage" instead of "water and sewers" was not proper; that a copy of the ballot was not properly published as required by the charter; that the calling of a special meeting of the council on the 27th of April to receive the returns was invalid, and that the votes were not properly canvassed, and that the bonds about to be issued are not in accordance with the provisions of the act because they are about to be issued in two series, and because in this way $4,000 of the principal and interest is to be paid in each of the third and fourth years of the issuance, and that since the bonds are to be numbered 1 to 50, only $50,000 worth of said bonds can be issued; that even if it should be held that the defendants can issue $100,000 worth of bonds, they must mature within not over 27 years from the date of issue, and that since the town can pay $4,000 in the third and fourth years, it has, of necessity, authority to continue such payments each year, which would make the final bonds payable 27 years after the date of issue, and any payment after that time would not be authorized."

Most of the objections which are urged to the validity of the act are technical merely, and are fully covered by the opinion of this court in the case of Carr v. Hyattsville, 115 Md. 545, 81 A. 8, to which more extended reference will be made later.

The bill in this case again attacks the validity of a front-foot assessment, notwithstanding the decisions of this court in Hyattsville v. Smith, 105 Md. 318, 66 A. 44, and Lyon v. Hyattsville, 125 Md. 306, 93 A. 919, Ann. Cas. 1916E, 765, and it does this upon a decision in the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of the Gast Realty Co. v. Schneider, 240 U.S. 55, 36 S.Ct. 254, 255, 400, 60 L.Ed. 523, decided in the early part of the present year.

That case was one brought to collect a paving tax in the city of St. Louis, where, by a somewhat peculiar provision of the charter, one-fourth of the cost of a local improvement was to be levied upon property upon the front-foot basis,...