Southern Ry. Co. v. Rowland
| Decision Date | 24 October 1925 |
| Parties | SOUTHERN RY. CO. v. ROWLAND et al. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Bill by the Southern Railway Company against Frank Rowland, trustee, and others. From a judgment sustaining a demurrer to the bill, complainant appeals. Decree affirmed.
E. B. Madison, Candler & Stewart, and James Clark, all of Athens for Railway Co.
Frank K. Boyd, of Athens, for Rowland and others.
Pursuant to authority conferred by chapter 82 of the Private Acts of Tennessee for the year 1911, authorizing county courts within designated population limits to levy a special tax for road purposes, the county court of McMinn county, to which county the act applied, levied a tax of 6 cents on each $100 worth of taxable property for the year 1924. The Southern Railway Company declined to pay the tax assessed on its property in that county, and filed the bill in this case challenging the constitutionality of the act, upon the ground that the act did not conform to, and was broader than, the caption, and also charging that the county court had failed to comply with certain provisions of the act with respect to the distribution of the fund among the several county districts.
The chancellor sustained a demurrer to the bill, and the railway company has appealed.
The specific complaint made of the act is that, whereas in the caption the special tax is limited to 50 cents upon each $100 worth of property, the act itself contains no such limitation. It is of course well settled that the subject of an act must be expressed in the title in order that the legislators may be put upon notice of that upon which they are called to vote, and an act which in its caption fixes a limitation upon the power to tax proposed thereby to be conferred does not conform to the constitutional requirement, if in the body of the act an unlimited power to tax be conferred. In the instant case it is said for the county that, construing the caption and the act, it is quite manifest that it was not the intention of the Legislature to confer in the body of the act an unlimited power, but that the words recited in the caption and omitted in the body of the act expressing the limitation to 50 cents can and should be read into the body of the act.
The caption authorizes any county, within the population classification named, through its county court, "to levy and collect a special tax of not exceeding fifty cents upon each one hundred dollars' worth of taxable property for the purpose of building and improving public roads," etc. Section 1 of the act provides that the county court is authorized "to levy and assess a tax upon each one hundred dollars' worth of taxable values," etc. It is plausibly contended that the words underscored above were intended to appear between the word "tax" and the word "upon" in the paragraph quoted from the body of the act.
Applying well recognized rules of construction which require the court to save rather than destroy the act, and to give to it a consistent and sensible meaning rather than otherwise, and to conform and reconcile the different sections and provisions, we are of the...
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