Yellow Pine Co. v. State Bd. of Assessors

• Decision Date: 19 June 1905
• Citation: 61 A. 436,72 N.J.L. 182
• Parties: YELLOW PINE CO. v. STATE BOARD OF ASSESSORS.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

61 A. 436

72 N.J.L. 182

YELLOW PINE CO.

v. STATE BOARD OF ASSESSORS.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

June 19, 1905.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to Supreme Court.

Certiorari by the Yellow Pine Company against the State Board of Assessors. From a judgment of the Supreme Court (57 Atl. 393) affirming the validity of a tax, plaintiff brings error. Affirmed.

George L. Record, for plaintiff in error. The Attorney General, for defendant in error.

MAGIE, Ch. The judgment of the Supreme Court removed here by this writ of error affirmed the validity of a tax imposed by the State Board of Assessors upon the Yellow Pine Company, the plaintiff in error, for the year 1903, under the provisions of the act entitled "An act to provide for the imposition of state taxes upon certain corporations, and for the collection thereof," approved April 18, 1884 (P. L. p. 232), as amended by a supplement thereto approved February 19, 1901 (Laws 1901, p. 31). The matter was presented to the Supreme Court by a return of the State Board of Assessors to a certiorari, sued out by the plaintiff in error. Two reasons were assigned for setting aside the tax: (1) That the corporation was a manufacturing company, more than 50 per cent. of whose capital stock issued and outstanding was invested in manufacturing carried on within this state; and (2) that the assessment of the tax upon the corporation was illegal for divers other unspecified reasons.

There is nothing in the opinion delivered in the Supreme Court to indicate that it was there contended that the tax under review was in any respect illegally assessed, unless it had been successfully shown to the court that the corporation on which it was imposed was exempted from such tax. No other illegality has been claimed or suggested in this court. The matter was brought to hearing in the court below upon depositions taken upon notice, and it may be presumed to have been thus presented under the provisions of section 11 of the revised certiorari act of 1903 (Laws 1903, p. 343), which were in force when the certiorari was allowed. No objection to this course of practice seems to have been made in the Supreme Court, and none has been suggested here. It is not, however, improper to notice that the provisions of section 11, above referred to, which empower the court in a case of certiorari to determine disputed questions of fact as well as of law, and to inquire into facts by depositions, are not as broad as were the provisions of section 9 of the revised certiorari act of 1874 as the same were amended in 1895 (1 Gen. St pp. 367, 370). By that section the power was conferred in cases of certioraries removing "any tax or assessment." The present act, by section 11, omits the word "tax." While both acts confer power in cases of certioraries reviewing the proceedings of a special statutory tribunal, it may perhaps be questionable whether the State Board of Assessors, in imposing such tax upon corporations under the provisions of the applicable act, constitute a special statutory tribunal whose decisions may be thus reviewed. Assuming, however, as was done on the argument,...