State v. Brown

• Decision Date: 06 November 1890
• Citation: 20 A. 772,53 N.J.L. 162
• Parties: STATE, (BAILEY, Prosecutor) v. BROWN, Collector.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

20 A. 772

53 N.J.L. 162

STATE, (BAILEY, Prosecutor)

v. BROWN, Collector.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Nov. 6, 1890.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari.

This writ brings up assessments for taxes in the borough of Manasquan for the year 1888, and for the year 1889.

Argued at June term, 1890, before SCUDDER and REED, JJ.

Frank P. McDermott, for plaintiff. William H. Vredenburgh, for defendants.

REED, J. The taxes questioned are levied for borough purposes, the borough of Manasquan being incorporated under the act for the formation of borough governments. Supp. Revision, 44.

The first objection to the tax, which is pressed by the counsel for the prosecutor, is directed against the levy of any tax upon his property for the purpose of meeting the expenses of the borough government. This position is based upon the evidence that the land taxed is used as farm land, and is outside of the village of Manasquan, as it exists as a fact. The testimony is that the village as it is built up occupies about one-third of the territory included within the corporate limits. The other two-thirds of the territory consists of farming, meadow, and marsh land. The prosecutor swears that his land used for agricultural purposes receives no benefit from the existence of a borough, nor from the money expended by it. In respect to this claim for immunity, there are a number of cases in the courts of Iowa, Kentucky, and Nebraska, in which the invalidity of such a tax is adjudged. The courts in these cases, by injunction or other process, have stepped in, and arrested the proceedings to collect, on the ground that it was taking private property for public purposes, without compensation; that it was confiscation, and not taxation. Except in the courts of the states mentioned, the doctrine thus promulged has no support in the jurisprudence of this country. The power of the legislature to fix the territorial limits of municipal corporations has never been doubted, indeed is not questioned in the cases above noted. The power of the legislature to authorize the levying of taxes, for any public purpose, upon all the property within the municipality is indeed denied in those cases, but nowhere else. The ground upon which the courts went was that no benefit accrued to the party assessed, so his land, by reason of that, was non-assessable. They imported into the levy of a general tax the question of benefits to the taxpayer. If he was benefited, he could be assessed; otherwise not. It is perceived that if the matter of benefits to the taxpayer becomes a judicial problem the courts cannot halt at the line of no benefit in dealing with general tax levies. The logical result of a judicial intervention at all carries the boundary of supervision into all degrees of benefit. Is he benefited to the amount of the tax levied? If not, how much is he benefited? and a proportional abatement. The admission of such a power of inquiry would be entirely novel, and would overwhelm the courts with the duty of tax revision. Actual benefit lies at the foundation of valid special assessments for local improvements. In the case of general taxation for governmental purposes, benefit is presumed to accrue to all; but it does not accrue to each one in the same manner, or in equal degree. Inequality is the rule arising out of the inevitable variations of personal environment. Hundreds are assessed in a city for the expense of electric lights, who have to content themselves with gas, or nothing; for sewers, when no sewer runs within a mile of their property; for public parks, which are located on the opposite side of the city, and are practicably unreachable for the purposes of recreation; and for police, when such an officer is rarely visible. Many of the levies for the support of these and similar features of municipal government are as inequitable as the levy of urban taxes upon rural property. It has never been successfully urged that because of the inequality of return the tax was inequitable. The courts which have enjoined the collection of taxes upon agricultural land assessed for municipal purposes have not intimated that they would entertain jurisdiction of cases of taxation where there was some but not an adequate benefit. This was a ground set up in the case of State v. Collector, 39 N. J. Law, 75, against an assessment for taxes made upon property situated within the limits of a district under control of a municipal corporation known as "The Long Branch Police, Sanitary & Improvement Commission." It was insisted that the prosecutor in that case was not liable to be taxed for police, fire department, or lighting streets, because his property was some distance from street lights, police patrol, and the depository of the fire apparatus, and therefore he could have no benefit from them. It was held that these facts presented no ground upon which the tax-payer could be relieved from his assessment. It is true that Mr. Justice KNAPP. in his opinion, in speaking of rural lands refused to say whether there might not be cases where the courts would relieve property entirely from taxation imposed purely for municipal purposes. But it seems to me that the ratio decedendo in that case precludes the admission of any distinction in favor of any class of property. For the doctrine laid down was that the legislature was supreme, subject only to constitutional limitations in dispensing the power of taxation to municipal corporations; that the legislature could establish the territorial limits over which municipal government should...