Edward Douglass White

“ In the pleadings there is nothing which justified the decree, or to which it was responsive, except the exemption of the bank. And this conclusion results by an overwhelming implication when the state of the statute law of Louisiana is considered. By that law, as is shown by the assessment here assailed, wherever a tax is excessive in amount, it is not to be avoided, but is reduced; and the board of assessors are entitled, when property is omitted for any reason, to immediately make up a supplemental roll correcting the error. ”

“ Any president or other officer who shall refuse or fail to deliver the said list of shareholders, and said statement of book value and of bank's condition, within the first twenty days of January of each year to the assessor, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court. The district attorney will at once act upon any complaint of such neglect or refusal made to him by the assessor, or by the board of assessors in the parish of Orleans.' Acts La. ”

“ Rejecting the claim of the bank to nonliability to taxation on the property acquired by it under foreclosure of mortgage,-the whole without prejudice to the right of the state and municipal authorities to claim a license tax, should such be imposed by law on the bank, and without prejudice to the right of the bank to assert any legal defenses which it may have to the payment of such license tax ”

“ If voluntary payments to or for account of its shareholders would violate is charter, and be a breach of its contract with the state and its bondholders, forced payments would be equally so. The authorities cited by the defendants are inapplicable to the present case. Where the capital, assets, and profits of a bank are at the disposal of its shareholders, the state may perhaps compel the bank to pay their taxes on stock. ”

“ The first contention based upon the more change in the person holding the particular office is without merit. It is not denied that the tax collectors and board of assessors who stood in judgment in the suit when the decisions were rendered were duly qualified and empowered to that end. And it is also not gainsaid that the successors in office of those officers who are defendants here are also duly empowered. The mere fact that there has been a change in the person holding the office does not destroy the effect of the thing adjudged. ”

“ That language is broad enought to cover everything which, during its existence, should enter into and make part of the capital of said bank.
'By the twenty-ninth section of the original charter, 'all the profits made by said corporation shall be added to and made a part of its capital,' except a certain fraction of any excess of profits over what was necessary to pay the bonds issued by the bank. It is not pretended that any such excess of profits exists, or ever has. As a matter of fact, the bank has never declared a dividend to its shareholders. ”

“ In all cases, therefore, where it is sought to apply the estoppel of a judgment rendered upon one cause of action to the matters arising in a suit upon a different cause of action, the inquiry must always be as to the point or question actually litigated and determined in the original action, not what might have been thus litigated and determined. ”

“ The proposition that, because a suit for a tax of one year is a different demand from the suit for a tax for another, therefore res judicata cannot apply, while admitting in form the principle of the thing adjudged, in reality substantially denies and destroys it. ”

“ The claim that, because the charter provided that the subscribers should have a right to borrow from the bank on their stock a certain amount of the capital afforded by the sale of the bonds, therefore the stock mortgages constitute an investment of the capital, is likewise without merit. ”

“ The civil district court is a court of general and unlimited original jurisdiction, possessing full common-law, equity, and probate powers, besides having an appellate jurisdiction over the city courts. ”

“ To secure the payment of these state bonds, the bank pledged all the notes furnished by its stockholders for the amount of their stock subscriptions, as well as the mortgages by which the payment of these notes was secured. As an additional security for the payments of the bonds of the state, the right of the stockholders to receive a dividend was limited, the charter providing that a given portion of the earnings should be added to the capital. ”

“ The two judgments not being between the same parties, there could have been and was no necessity for deciding whether, if the judgment had been between the same parties or their privies, it would have been res judicata. True it is that in the Keokuk Case the opinion arguendo discusses the question of whether a judgment against the validity of a tax for one year would be a bar to a suit for taxes for a subsequent year. ”