Case ID: mo_24/html/0020-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "LEONARD, Judge,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Lockwood et al., Appellants, v. City of St. Louis et al., Respondents.
    1. Although the courts will not interfere by injunction to restrain the sale of personal property levied upon and advertised to be sold for the payment of taxes illegally assessed; yet, it seems, they will.so interfere where it is sought to enjoin the sale of real property. (Deane v. Todd, 22 Mo. 91, explained.)
    2. Church property in the city of St. Louis was liable, under the sewerage act of March 12, 1949, (Sess. Acts, 1849, p. 519,) to he assessed for the construction of sewers.
    
      Appeal from St. Louis Land Court.
    
    This was a petition for an injunction to restrain the sale by the city of St. Louis of St. George’s church. The plaintiffs are the trustees of St. George’s church. They allege in their petition that a special tax for the year 1854, amounting to $>139 25, was assessed upon St. George’s church for the construction of a sewer in the district in which said church is situated ; that the said church had been advertised for sale for the payment of said tax by the City of St. Louis, by her comptroller, H. Overstoltz. Plaintiffs prayed for an order enjoining the sale; also that the assessment be declared illegal and void ; also that the city be enjoined against further assessing or levying any tax against said church property for the construction of said sewer.
    A restraining order was granted. The petition was demurred to, and, the demurrer having been sustained, the injunction was dissolved. Plaintiffs appealed to this court.
    
      J. Jl. Kasson, for appellants.
    
      T. T. Gantt and W. L. Williams, for respondents.
   LEONARD, Judge,

delivered the opinion of the court.

1. This court has allowed relief by injunction in several cases where real property was about to be sold for the nonpayment of taxes assessed by a municipal corporation, but has never allowed it, that I am aware of, to prevent a sale of personal property. The distinction is obvious enough. In one case, a cloud is about to be drawn over a land title, and the court interferes to prevent it; in the other, the legal remedy is full and ample, and no reason exists for the interposition of equity. The present case falls within the previous decisions of this court; but in Deane v. Todd, (22 Mo. 91,) to which we have been referred, the sale sought to be enjoined was of personal property ; and, although the judgment there certainly did not extend the doctrine of this court, as to the relief by injunction, to sales of personal property, it did not disturb the adjudications already made in reference to sales of real property ; no matter what the judges, who concurred in that opinion, may have thought of those decisions as an original question.