State Ex Rel. Taliaferro v. Baskin

• Decision Date: 04 December 1933
• Citation: 151 So. 421,113 Fla. 115
• Parties: STATE ex rel. TALIAFERRO v. BASKIN et al.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

151 So. 421

113 Fla. 115

STATE ex rel. TALIAFERRO v. BASKIN et al.

Florida Supreme Court

December 4, 1933

Rehearing Denied Dec. 27, 1933.

Original proceedings in mandamus by the State of Florida, on the relation of James P. Taliaferro, against H. H. Baskin and others, as City Commissioners of the City of Clearwater, and others.

Decision in accordance with opinion.

On Petition for Rehearing.

COUNSEL Martin H. Long, of Jacksonville, for relator.

Jones &amp White, of Clearwater, for respondents.

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

The defense to the alternative writ of mandamus in this case is that the respondents, city officials of Clearwater, Fla should not be required to revise the budget of the city for the fiscal year 1933-1934 so as to provide for and appropriate therein for the payment of relator's bonds, a sum equal to all past-due principal, interest coupons delinquent and current interest to fall due, because pursuant to a previously issued peremptory writ of mandamus emanating from this court, a tax levy sufficient, if collected, to pay relator's bonds, was made last year although not collected.

The alternative writ shows that relator's bonds are general obligations of the city of Clearwater and that 'the full faith, credit and resources of the City of Clearwater' were in and by said bonds, and in and by the statute under which they were issued, 'irrevocably pledged' to their payment 'as they respectively become due.'

Where municipal bonds are issued under statutes which authorize the pledge of the full faith and credit of the issuing municipality to pay them as to principal and interest as they respectively become due, and such bonds are actually issued containing an irrevocable pledge of the full faith, credit, and resources of the issuing city for the payment thereof as they respectively come due, cumulative levies which will produce enough to pay are authorized and required to be ordered on the theory that where bonds are general obligations of the municipality there is a continuing obligation to make provision by taxation for paying them in due course, where special assessments or other means of paying them, when due, have failed to result in actual payment. Klemm v. Davenport, 100 Fla. 627, 129 So 904, 70 A. L. R. 156; Norris v. Montezuma Valley Irrigation Dist. (C. C. A.) 248 F. 369; Montezuma Valley Irrigation Dist. v. Norris, 248 U.S. 569, 39 S.Ct. 10, 63 L.Ed. 425; State ex rel. Dos Anigos, Inc v. Lehman, 100 Fla. 1313, 131 So. 533. This is an age old, but lawful inequity, when it occurs in the exercise of general taxing powers pledged to pay a municipality's bonded debts. Fisher v. City of Charleston, 17 W.Va. 595; State ex rel. Soutter v. Common Council of City of Madison, 15 Wis. 30; Cosman v. Chestnut Valley Irrigation Dist., 74 Mont. 111, 238 P. 879, 40 A. L. R. 1344 and notes. And the stated rule has been heretofore applied and judicially enforced as the law of this state. Rountree v. State ex rel. Georgia Bond & Mtg. Co., 102 Fla. 246, 135 So. 888.

The court holds that the relator's motion for a peremptory writ of mandamus, notwithstanding the return, should be granted; but in view of the admitted representations made by respondent city officials in the return to the effect that their failure to make the presently required levy in the current budget was done by respondents in good faith, and upon the advice of counsel that such was a proper course of procedure to follow, in consequence of which the budget for 1933-1934 has already been adopted, and the 1933-1934 tax roll based thereon already placed in the hands of the tax collector, so that to require withdrawal of the same at this time would cause confusion and disorder in the fiscal affairs of the city for the current year, no formal order for a peremptory writ will be entered at this time on the present alternative writ, but relator will be permitted to so amend his alternative writ as to...