Case ID: mann-unrep-cas_1/html/0191-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "White, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

No. 6510.
    Henry W. Benjamin vs. City of New Orleans.
    Whatever may be the right of a tax-payer, or of a creditor holding a particular claim on a fund, to prevent the appropriation of revenue derived from taxation to illegal purposes, or to prevent the diversion of the funci upon which his claim rests, it is clear that one who does not aver or shew himself to be either a tax-payer or such creditor cannot invoke tlie power of the courts to control the application by a municipal corporation of its revenues as it sees proper.
    An allegation that the city is illegally applying the revenues of the wharves to the payment of wharf-bonds, upon which is based an injunction restraining such payment, discloses no cause of action, because if the wharf-bonds are illegal, the builders of the wharves have no claim, and the revenues exacted by the city from wharves must cease eo instanti, since the exaction of such revenues is legally justifiable only in consequence of expenditures for their erection or their repairs. The logical conclusion is that the very existence of the claimed cause of action would be its legal annihilation.
    Appeal from the Superior District Court of New Orleans. Lynch, J.
    
      A. Walker and Shaw for Plaintiff Appellant. MeCaleb, E. H. Farrar, and Lazarus for Defendant.
   White, J.,

delivered the opinion affirming the judgment.