Opinion ID: 1530929
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was the Payment of Poundage Fees Voluntary?

Text: The above question was squarely raised by the defendant's demurrer, but the learned trial judge found it unnecessary to decide it because of his holding that the Sheriff was entitled to poundage. Since we disagree with that holding, the question of voluntary payment requires decision. Although the general rule is that this Court shall not decide any point or question which does not clearly appear to have been tried and decided by the Court below (Rule 9 of our Rules and Regulations Respecting Appeals, derived from Chapter 117 of the Acts of 1825) there are some types of cases which have long been regarded as outside its scope or as exceptions to this rule. Among the types of cases so excluded or excepted are those presented on demurrer; and we are therefore not precluded in this case from passing upon this second question. Other cases which are also excepted or excluded are those arising on motions in arrest of judgment which are considered to be on the same footing as demurrers as regards this rule. See as illustrative of the exceptions: Baltimore City v. Austin, 95 Md. 90, 93-94, 51 A. 824; Muir v. Beauchamp, 91 Md. 650, 658, 47 A. 821; Bragunier v. Penn, 79 Md. 244, 29 A. 12; Shaeffer v. Gilbert, 73 Md. 66, 72-73, 20 A. 434; Smith v. State, 66 Md. 215, 219, 7 A. 49; Keller v. Stevens, 66 Md. 132, 134, 6 A. 533; Smith v. Wood, 31 Md. 293, 301-302; State, use of Charlotte Hall School v. Greenwell, 4 G. & J. 407, 416; Poe, Pleading and Practice, Vol. 2, Tiffany's Ed., Sec. 838. The Sheriff contends that the judgment and costs are distinct from the poundage fee and that he therefore cannot levy on property for his poundage fee if the debt and costs are paid, but must resort to a separate suit. From this he argues that Imbach's property was not under immediate threat of seizure and hence that any payment must be deemed to have been made voluntarily. On the question of the voluntary character of the payment, he then relies largely upon Lester v. City of Baltimore, 29 Md. 415; Furman v. Lanahan, 159 Md. 1, 149 A. 465, which cites and relies inter alia upon a statement in Baltimore v. Lefferman, 4 Gill. 425 (at 436); Walk-A-Show, Inc. v. Stanton, 182 Md. 405, 35 A.2d 121; Magness v. Loyola Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n, 186 Md. 569, 47 A.2d 769; and Wasena Housing Corp. v. Levay, 188 Md. 383, 52 A.2d 903. The Sheriff's contention that Imbach was not under any immediate threat of seizure of his property seems to us to overlook the facts that his deputy was present, that tangible property belonging to Imbach was there and could readily have been seized and that the deputy threatened to seize it unless all amounts claimed  judgment, interest, costs and poundage  were paid at once. The total amount for which the deputy threatened to levy execution was in excess of $20,000 (as the amount of the poundage fee shows), and it hardly requires the exercise of imagination to deduce that Imbach stood to suffer substantial inconvenience and loss from the interruption to its business which would result from the seizure of its property of such a value. Imbach had no legal remedy which would have been available in time to prevent the threatened seizure, even though the Sheriff may have been wholly without right to make it for poundage alone. We do not, of course, suggest that his claim for poundage would have been strengthened if he had made an unwarranted seizure. There is a very full review of the authorities bearing on the question here involved in Jones v. Sherwood Distilling Co., 150 Md. 24, 132 A. 278. In that case excessive charges were demanded and paid for the release of goods from a warehouse. They were paid in order to obtain the release of the goods in time for shipment for export on board a certain vessel sailing within a very few days. The payment was held to have been made under compulsion. We think that the same principle governs payments to prevent the seizure of goods as payments to obtain their release. Valpy v. Manley, 50 Eng. Com. Law 592. It would be useless repetition for us to review the authorities set out in the Sherwood Distilling Co. case, and little need be said to supplement it. As Judge Walsh said in that opinion: It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a case in which some legal remedy for the recovery of goods would not be open to their owner, but the law does not require the owner to adopt such a remedy unless it is an adequate one, and if the use of the remedy would cause great inconvenience or loss it is not considered adequate. The cases above cited as those largely relied upon by the appellee are consonant with this statement of the rule. In the Lester and Lefferman cases there was ample opportunity to challenge the demands by litigation and there was no threat of immediate seizure of property. In the Walk-A-Show, Inc. case, there was not even any protest at the time of the payment of the license fees there sought to be recovered; and this Court, after reviewing the evidence pointed out that counsel for the appellant had formed an opinion on the subject in controversy, and had done so in ample time before payment to have had his professional opinion tested in court, and thus to have avoided the consequences if an adverse ruling had resulted. In Furman v. Lanahan , it held that there was no showing that the making of the payment there involved saved the plaintiff from any greater loss or damage than he would have sustained if he had not made the payment. In the Magness case, the concluding sentence in Judge Markell's opinion is: Thirteen years is time enough to litigate a question of law and pursue a suspicion of facts. In the Lester, Lefferman and Wasena Housing Corp. cases, supra, relied upon by the appellee, the availability of injunction proceedings to prevent the enforcement or collection of an illegal or allegedly illegal tax or charge was held to make the payments voluntary rather than compulsory, notwithstanding that they were made under protest. All of the cases recognize that a payment under duress is not a voluntary payment. Without prolonging this opinion further, we are of the view that there was no adequate legal remedy available to the appellant to prevent the threatened seizure of its property, that such seizure, if made, would have caused the appellant serious loss or inconvenience, and hence that the payment under protest was involuntary within the rule recognized in the Sherwood Distilling Co. case, supra, and that, in the language of the opinion in the Magness case, supra, it was made to emancipate    property from duress. It follows that the judgment appealed from must be reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings. The Sheriff is, of course, entitled to plead to the declaration, and the plaintiff will have the burden of establishing the facts alleged in the amended declaration. Judgment reversed with costs and case remanded.