Case ID: njl_92/html/0646-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Pee Curiam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

THE BOROUGH OF TOTOWA, RESPONDENT, v. THE STATE BOARD OF TAXES AND ASSESSMENT ET AL., APPELLANTS.
    Submitted December 9, 1918
    Decided February 6, 1919.
    On appeal from the Supreme Court, in which the following per curiam was filed:
    “The borough of Totowa levied an assessment for taxes to the extent of $35,000 on the property of the Mausoleum Builders of New Jersey, which the county board of taxes canceled, and on appeal to the state board it affirmed the cancellation notwithstanding that the Court of Errors and Appeals of this state had declared that this identical property was subject to taxation. The ground upon which the state board rests its action is a statute of 1916, page 477, which provides, section 6, that All mausoleums, vaults, crypts or structures intended to hold or to contain the bodies of the dead, now erected or which may hereafter be erected and located within any duly authorized cemetery organized in accordance with the laws of the State of New Jersey, shall be exempt from taxation in like manner as such cemeteries are now exempt by law/
    “The state board conceding that the act is unconstitutional so far as it confers immunity from taxation, said it was bound by its language, and therefore affirmed the action of the county board. It is our opinion that granting the act to be constitutional it does not apply to lands purchased by a corporation not a cemetery association, and that the decision of the Court of Errors and Appeals has not been affected by this new legislation. But aside from this the paragraph of the law exempting from taxation this property, is manifestly unconstitutional. Its title is An act to prescribe the conditions and restrictions under which public vaults, crypts or mausoleums for the interment of human bodies are constructed, and fixing penalties for failure to comply therewith/
    
      “The section of the act which is intended to exempt from taxation is in no way germane to the subject to which the title of the act refers, which is limited to the manner of construction and penalties for failure to comply therewith, and gives no sort of intimation that exemption from taxation was the subject of the act, and the exempting paragraph has no more place there than would a charter for a railroad company.
    “The order of the countjr board and of the state board should be set aside, and the original assessment affirmed.”
    Eor the appellant, Michael Dunn.
    
    For the respondent, Walter E. Hudson.
    
   Pee Curiam.

The judgment under review will be affirmed, for the reasons set forth in the opinion of the Supreme Court.

For affirmance — The Chancellor, Chief Justice, Swayze, Trenchard, Parker, Minturn, Kalisch, White, Peppenheimer, Williams, Gardner, JJ. 11.

For reversal — if one.