Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/216/285/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 00:16:43+00:00

Document:
Where the unsoundness of a federal question so clearly appears from previous decisions of this Court as to foreclose the subject and leave no room for controversy, the writ of error will be dismissed.
This Court having decided in Carstairs v. Cochran, 193 U. S. 10, that the State of Maryland can, as an exertion of its taxing power, without denial of due process of law, tax tangible property having a situs within its borders irrespective of the residence of the owner, and can if necessary impose the obligation to pay such tax upon the custodian or possessor of such property, giving a lien thereon to secure reimbursement, the only federal question involved and which would give this Court jurisdiction in this case is so foreclosed that the writ of error is dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
This Court will not usurp the functions of a state court of last resort in order to distort, if not destroy for infirmity of state power, a state statute expressly upheld as valid by the state court.
The facts, which involve the constitutionality of a taxing law of the State of Maryland and the jurisdiction of this Court to consider the same on writ of error, are stated in the opinion.
"chapter 704 of the acts of General Assembly of Maryland passed at the January session of 1892, as amended by chapter 320 of the acts of the general assembly of Maryland, passed at the January session of 1900."
"SEC. 214. There shall be levied and collected upon all distilled spirits in this state, as personal property, the same rate of taxation which is imposed by the laws of the state on other property for state and county purposes."
"SEC. 215. For the purpose of such assessment and collection, it is hereby made the duty of each distiller, and of every owner or proprietor of a bonded or other warehouse in which distilled spirits are stored, and of every person or corporation having custody of such spirits, to make report to the state tax commissioner, on the first day of January in each and every year, of all the distilled spirits on hand at such date, and the tax for the ensuing year from the said first of January shall be levied and paid on the amount of distilled spirits so in hand, as representing the taxable distilled spirits for such year; provided, however, that the same distilled spirits shall not be taxed twice for the same year."
payment a lien upon the spirits to secure the reimbursement of the taxes paid.
"that under the provisions of Article 15 of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of Maryland, as the same has been construed by the Court of Appeals of Maryland . . . the respective taxes levied on the assessed value of all of the said barrels of distilled spirits . . . were levied on the owners of said barrels of distilled spirits, who were and are persons other than this defendant, and the said taxes were not and could not have been levied on this defendant."
was specially averred that to compel the corporation to pay the taxes would be to deprive it of its property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The second plea substantially reiterated the averments of the first, and, in addition, specially alleged that all the persons who owned the distilled spirits resided outside of the State of Maryland, and could not be taxed in personam, and that, by the construction given to the Constitution of the state by the highest court of the state, the property, although situated in the state, was not susceptible of being taxed, and therefore the taxes were void, and there was no power to cast upon the corporation the duty of paying them, and to compel the corporation to pay the taxes would be a violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
A demurrer filed by the city to both pleas on the ground that they stated no defense was sustained without an opinion. The distilling company electing to stand upon its pleas, judgment was entered against it for the amount of the taxes. Thereupon a writ of error directly from this Court was prosecuted upon the assumption that questions under the Constitution of the United States were involved which gave a right to an immediate resort to this Court for their solution. Upon the correctness of such assumption our jurisdiction depends. The assumption, however, may not be indulged in simply because it appears from the record that a federal question was averred if such question be obviously frivolous or plainly unsubstantial either because it is manifestly devoid of merit or because its unsoundness so clearly results from the previous decisions of this Court as to foreclose the subject and leave no room for the inference that the questions sought to be raised can be the subject of controversy. Leonard v. Vicksburg, S. & P. R. Co., 198 U. S. 416, 198 U. S. 421, and cases cited; Delmar Jockey Club v. Missouri, 210 U. S. 324, 210 U. S. 335; McGilvra v. Ross, 215 U. S. 70,.
over nonresidents, it must follow from the limitations on the taxing power of the State of Maryland above asserted that that state, not having the power to tax a nonresident owner of distilled spirits, could not, without a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, by indirection accomplish the same result by imposing the obligation to pay upon the custodian. But back of the abstract theories as to the scope of the state taxing power, upon which these propositions necessarily depend, lies the inquiry whether, for the purposes of this case, in view of the previous decisions of the court of last resort of the State of Maryland and of this Court dealing with such decisions, it is open to press such theories, and to attempt to make them the basis of the assumed existence of rights under the Constitution of the United States.
spirits for the purposes of taxation, it was declared to be 'in other respects free from constitutional objections.'"
"The provisions of the Act of 1892, c. 704, were sufficiently detailed in the opinion rendered in Monticello Distilling Co. v. Baltimore, supra, and that statement will be adopted for this case without repeating it here. That act is assailed here as it was there, as fundamentally vicious, and upon precisely the same grounds, with the exception of the want of notice of assessment, which has been cured by the Act of 1900, c. 320. These grounds are two-fold: first, that it lays a tax upon property, and not upon the owner of the property, and second, that it compels one not the owner of the spirits to pay the tax due by the owner, who is usually unknown to the party compelled to pay."
outset declared (p. 193 U. S. 16) "that the statutes in question do not conflict with the Constitution of Maryland is settled by the decisions of its highest court." In considering the federal question, it was held that the State of Maryland could, as an exertion of its taxing power, without denial of due process of law, tax tangible property having a situs within its borders, irrespective of the residence of the owner, and could impose, if necessary, the obligation to pay such tax upon the custodian or possessor of such property, giving a lien thereon to secure the reimbursement of the tax so paid. It was, moreover, expressly held that neither the regulations contained in the laws of the United States concerning bonded warehouses for the storage of distilled spirits or the fact that the custodian in whose warehouse such spirits were stored had issued negotiable receipts for the same operated to prevent the assessment of the spirits for state taxation, and the imposing of the duty to make payment of the tax upon the warehouseman. Since the decision in the Carstairs case, the right of a state, consistently with the Constitution of the United States, to tax tangible property having a situs within its borders, irrespective of the residence of the owner, and to impose the duty on a warehouseman to pay a tax upon distilled spirits in his custody, even although the warehouse in which they were stored was bonded under the laws of the United States, has been again upheld in Thompson v. Kentucky, 209 U. S. 340.
It follows that, at the time the writ of error directly from this Court was sued out upon the assumed theory that the Maryland act imposing the taxes sued for was repugnant to the due process clause of the Constitution of the United States, such contention had been expressly decided to be without foundation by this Court, and therefore the propositions of federal right upon which alone the jurisdiction of this Court depended was foreclosed and not open to controversy, and afforded no substantial basis for the writ of error unless, for some of the reasons alleged by counsel, the case is taken out of this general principle.
sustained by the reasoning which the court gave for its conclusion, or that the reasoning was inherently unsound because it proceeded upon a misconception of the state constitution. In other words, the only possible foundation for the asserted federal question is the conception that this Court would usurp the functions of a state court of last resort in order to distort, if not to destroy, for infirmity of state power, a state law expressly upheld as valid by the state court of last resort.

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