Samuel Freeman Miller

“ A municipal corporation cannot, any more than any other corporation or private person, escape the taxes due on its property, whether acquired legally or illegally, and it cannot make its want of legal authority to engage in a particular transaction or business a shelter from the taxation imposed by the government on such business or transaction, by whomsoever conducted. ”

“ This would be a pleasant farce to be enacted by irresponsible parties, who give no bond, who have no property to respond to civil or criminal suits, who make no profit out of it, while the city grows rich in the performance. ”

“ Defendant, answering, admits that the list containing the said gallon tax assessed by the commissioner of internal revenue of the United States was placed in the hands of this defendant as collector of internal revenue. And defendant alleges that said plaintiff having engaged in the business of distilling and producing spirits as aforesaid, and said tax having been assessed by the commissioner of internal revenue as aforesaid, and placed in the hands of the defendant, as collector of internal revenue, for collection, it became and was his duty as such collector to collect said tax. ”

“ The court said: 'It is too late to discuss the question, once much debated, whether a corporation can commit a trespass, or is liable in an action on the case, or subject generally to actions for torts as individuals are. The books of reports for a quarter of a century show that a very large proportion of actions of this nature, both for non-feasance and for misfeasance, are against corporations ”

“ It would be a fine thing, if this argument is good, for all distillers to organize into milling corporations to make flour, and proceed to the more profitable business of distilling spirits, which would be unauthorized by their charters or articles of incorporation ”