Sprout v. City of South Bend
Decision Date | 14 October 1926 |
Docket Number | No. 24695.,24695. |
Citation | 198 Ind. 563,153 N.E. 504 |
Parties | SPROUT v. CITY OF SOUTH BEND. |
Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from St. Joseph Circuit Court, W. A. Funk, Judge.
Action by the City of South Bend against Otis Sprout. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.
Isaac Kane Parks, of Mishawaka, and Walter R. Arnold, of South Bend, for appellant.
Lewis W. Hammond, of South Bend, for appellee.
The question for decision in this case is the validity or invalidity of certain ordinances of the city of South Bend. The statute constituting the city charter authorizes cities “to regulate, tax and license coaches, hacks, drays, automobiles and all other vehicles,” and “to license, tax and regulate public hackmen, draymen, omnibus drivers, carters, cabmen, porters, expressmen, bill-posters and all other persons pursuing like occupations for pay or hire.” Clauses 32, 38, § 10284, Burns' 1926 (section 53, c. 129, Acts 1905, pp. 219, 252). And the Motor Vehicle Registration Act then provided that “no owner of a motor vehicle, except motor trucks and motor driven commercial vehicles” should be required to pay any municipal tax or license fee, in addition to the registration fee paid to the secretary of state, with a proviso that nothing in the act should be construed as affecting the power of municipal corporations to make and enforce ordinances, rules, and regulations affecting motor trucks and motor driven commercial vehicles used within their limits for public hire. Section 10476d, Burns' 1914 (section 17, c. 300, Acts 1913, pp. 779, 789).
Ordinance No. 2135 of the appellee city, adopted January 12, 1921, reads as follows:
***”
Without repealing this ordinance, but as supplementary thereto, the common council, on December 27, 1921, adopted another ordinance, numbered 2229, which (in part) provided as follows:
***”
A verified complaint by the city of South Bend alleged that on the 30th of May, 1923, “defendant, then being a resident of the said county of St. Joseph, and being at said time within the corporate limits of the said city of South Bend, did then and there operate a commercial vehicle upon a public street of said city without having first obtained a license from said city so to do, contrary to sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of an Ordinance No. 2229 adopted by the common council of said city December 27, 1921.” The evidence consisted of a stipulation of facts which, in addition to setting out the ordinances at length, stated the following facts: That defendant resided in St. Joseph county, Ind., at the city of Mishawaka, which adjoins South Bend on the east. That daily for several months he operated between South Bend and Niles, in the state of Michigan, a motorbus for the transportation of passengers between those places (it is about four and one-half miles from the north city limits of South Bend to the Michigan state line, in which distance is one village and many suburban residences, and Niles is four or five miles north of the state line); that in the course of such transportation of passengers defendant entered within the corporate limits of the city of South Bend, “and there offered himself and his vehicle as instruments of transportation for passengers from said city of South Bend to the said city of Niles, Mich., and all points intermediate between (them) *** north of the state line, *** and in the solicitation of passengers for transportation, and in making contracts of passage, stated that he was engaged in effecting transportation only between points in the state of Indiana and points in the state of Michigan, but that, if passengers who were taken aboard his bus for transportation desired to leave the said bus prior to the passage from Indiana to Michigan, they were at liberty to do so, if the bus stopped, *** but they would be obliged to pay transportation to some point in Michigan; *** that it was defendant's practice, on said day and for several months prior thereto, on making stops after leaving the city of South Bend, to permit passengers who had taken passage to some point north of the state line between Indiana and Michigan to alight from said bus, and that they did so on...
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Farrell v. City of Mobile
...244 P. 149; Hester v. Ark. R. Commission, 172 Ark. 90, 287 S.W. 763; Weksler v. Collins, 317 Ill. 132, 147 N.E. 797; Sprout v. South Bend. 198 Ind. 563, 153 N.E. 504, 154 N.E. 369, 49 A. L. R. 1198; Id., 277 U.S. 163, 48 502, 72 L.Ed. 833, 62 A. L. R. 45; Williams v. Denney, 151 Wash. 630, ......
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Sprout v. City of South Bend
...the violation of an ordinance regulating the use of "jitney busses" therein. On appeal to the Supreme Court, the judgment was affirmed (198 Ind. 563). The appellant appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the judgment of the Indiana Supreme Court was reversed (48 S.Ct. 502......