Case ID: iowa_24/html/0033-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Beck, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Olmstead v. The Board of Supervisors of Henry County.
    1. Taxation! national bank shares : case hollowed. The case of Huíbard et al. v. The Board of Supervisors of Johnson County, 23 Iowa, 130 (holding that, under our laws, national hank shares are not taxa ble) followed.
    2. -mandamus : injunction. As to whether mandamus commanding the hoard of supervisors to strike the assessment from the tax roll, is the proper remedy to prevent the collection of an unauthorized tax, quere. But an injunction to restrain its levy and collection is; and where a petition in addition to a prayer for such mandamus also prayed for an injunction, and no objection was made to this double prayer, a demurrer to the whole petition on the ground that mandamus was not the proper remedy, was held to have been improperly sustained.
    
      Appeal from Henry District Court.
    
    Monday, January 27.
    The petition in this case recites that appellants are stockholders of the State National Bank of Mount Pleasant, organized and existing under the law of congress creating national banks; that the capital of said bank is invested in bonds of the United States; that said bank was assessed for the year 1866, as agent of its shareholders in the sum of $110,840 upon its capital stock; that at the June session, 1866, of the board of supervisors, appellants made application to the board to have said assessment against the bank stricken from the assessment roll, which was refused; that unless restrained, the board will proceed to the collection of the tax levied upon such assessment, amounting to $2,383.06. The relief asked in the petition, is fbr a mandamus commanding the board to strike from the tax roll said assessment, and that it be enjoined and restrained from levying and collecting the tax.
    A demurrer to the petition, on the ground that the assessment and levy were lawfully made, and that mandamus is not the proper remedy, was sustained by the court. Plaintiffs appeal.
    
      T. W. & J. S. Woolson for the appellant.
    
      J. Traey for the appellee.
   Beck, J.

I. The assessment and levy of the tax is illegal, the shares of the bank not being taxable. Hubbard et al. v. Supervisors of Johnson County, 23 Iowa, 130.

II. Without deciding whether mandamus is a proper remedy for plaintiffs, we are agreed in holding that the petition prays for proper relief by injunction. i” , - r . - , Neither need we determine whether the joinder of the prayers for the remedies of mandamus and injunction, is warranted by our Code of Practice. It was not objected to by defendant, and such objection, had it been made and sustained, would not have operated to dismiss the proceeding, for the plaintiffs could have amended their petition, and abandoned their claim for one or the other of the remedies. Inasmuch, then, as injunction is a proper remedy, and is prayed for in the petition, we are of the opinion that the demurrer should not have been sustained.

Reversed.