Case ID: walker_3/html/0282-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Cüriam :", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

CASEY VS. WADE.
    A collector of bounty tax under the Act of March 25, 1864, has the same power to collect delinquent taxes by suit as a collector of county taxes.
    A collector can sue as collector.
    The right to sue is not barred until six years after the warrant to collect taxes has expired.
    Error to Common Pleas of Lackawanna County.
    No. 237
    January Term, 1883.
    The plaintiff below is the collector of the Hyde Park bounty tax. The defendant below is a taxpayer within the tax district. The total amount of the bounty tax in 1864 was $59,470. The borough authorities from 1864 to 1873 levied taxes amounting in the aggregate to the sum of $121,059.34. For a period of nine years the people paid their bounty tax without resistance. In 1873, discovering that, notwithstanding the enormous levies that were made and collected during nine years, the whole amount applied to the payment of bounty tax bonds was $4,000, they appealed to the Court for protection against this •power to levy and collect each year a twenty-mill tax. A Bill In Equity was filed and an injunction against the further collection of the tax granted, which was finally decided adversely to the taxpayers. Afterwards D. H. Wade, not in his own right, but as tax collector, brought a large number of suits before Alderman Blair against the taxpayers for the taxes due on the duplicate issued on the 17th day of November, 1873. The case in hand is one of the number of suits thus brought, on February 2,1880. The cases were appealed to the Common Pleas, and this case was then tried and a verdict against the defendant below was rendered, from which this appeal is taken. The questions involved are purely legal, and are as follows :
    First. Does the sixth section of the Act of Assembly relating to this tax (P. L. 1864, p. 85) confer upon the tax collector, either in his own right or as collector, a right of action?
    Second. If it does, should not the action be brought in his own right, and not as collector ?
    Third. If the right of action exists, is it not barred by the statute of limitation, as more than six years have elapsed from the time the duplicate was placed in the collector’s hands, before suit was brought, though it was less than six years from the time the warrant expired.
    The Court below decided in favor of the collector, and this writ of error was then taken.
    
      C. Smith, Esq., for plaintiff in error.
    
      S. B. Price and M. J. Wilson, Esqs., contra,
    cited, Wilkesbarre vs. Russell, 51 Pa., 71.
   The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Common Pleas od March 5,1883, in the following opinion,

Per Cüriam :

We think the Act of March 25, 1864, P. L., 85, gives to the collector of bounty taxes all the remedies given to the collector of State and County taxes. This view of the statute is fatal to the defence set up against the collection of the tax in this case.

Judgment affirmed.