Standard Oil Co v. People of State of California
| Decision Date | 05 February 1934 |
| Docket Number | No. 347,347 |
| Citation | 78 L.Ed. 775,291 U.S. 242,54 S.Ct. 381 |
| Parties | STANDARD OIL CO. v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF CALIFORNIA |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Appeal from the Supreme Court of the State of California.
Messrs. V. K. Butler, Jr., Oscar Sutro, and Felix T. Smith, all of San Francisco, Cal., for appellant.
Messrs. U. S. Webb and H. H. Linney, both of San Francisco, Cal., for appellee.
By chapter 267 (page 571), Statutes 1923, as amended (chapters 716 and 795 (pages 1309, 1565), Statutes 1927), the state of California undertook to lay a license tax upon every distributor for each gallon of motor vehicle fuel 'sold and delivered by him in this State' with certain exceptions not here important.
At its own expense and risk, appellant, a Delaware corporation, qualified to do business in California, sold and delivered to the Post Exchange, within the Presidio of San Francisco, 420 gallons of gasoline. It carried this to the Exchange's place of business in barrels or by tank trucks. Both sale and delivery were within the area long held and occupied by the United States for military purposes.
The state demanded of appellant three cents per gallon upon the gasoline so sold and delivered. Payment being refused, this suit followed. In the trial court the company prevailed. The Supreme Court held to the contrary and, among other things, said: 22 P.(2d) 2, 3.
The Presidio of San Francisco, a tract of more than fourteen hundred acres, lies between that city and the Golden Gate, and is within the exterior limits of California. Established as a military post under Spanish dominion about 1776, it continued to be so used by the Republic of Mexico until ceded to the United States in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (9 Stat. 922). An executive order of November 6, 1850, dedicated it to public purposes; since then it has been occupied as a military reservation. By Act of March 2, 1897 (St. Cal. 1897, p. 51), California ceded to the United States exclusive jurisdiction over this area with a proviso: 'That this State reserves the right to serve and execute on said lands all civil process, not incompatible with this cession, and such criminal process as may lawfully issue under the authority of this State against any person or persons charged with crimes committed without said lands.' See United States v. Watkins (D.C.) 22 F.(2d) 437. The state reserved to herself no power whatever in respect of taxation.
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