Court Opinion

ID: 7970824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 00:55:00.277781+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:34:46.216657
License: Public Domain

CANTY, .1.
(dissenting).
I cannot concur. The majority assume that they are following Strickland v. City of Stillwater, 63 Minn. 43, 65 N. W. 131, but the facts in that case were wholly different. There it was not claimed that any money was squandered or spent foolishly. Every dollar expended returned a full dollar’s benefit to the property holders, but the city in fact abandoned a part of the improvement district and a part of the improvement. That action was brought on the theory that the plaintiff’s property was wholly without the limits of any assessment district which the city authorities were warranted in carving out for the purpose of assessing thereon the cost of the improvements as actually made. We held that the property was not outside such an assessment district, but that as the assess*390ment district was in fact changed by the abandonment of the improvements in a part of it, and the improvements also changed, the court or the jury must in this action make a new assessment to meet these new conditions, and determine the amount of benefit to plaintiff’s property and award him the balance assessed against the property.
Here the plaintiff is not outside of the assessment district, or on the edge of it, where his assessment should be lighter, but he is in the very midst of it; and it is not claimed that the change made in the district by the abandonment of the improvement of the street through the Hennessy tract before any improvement was made in that part of the street could in any event make the assessment against plaintiff’s property any the less. But this action is brought upon the theory that when a special tax is levied on property specially benefited by an improvement, to defray the cost of making that improvement, and the money is spent in the improAement, but the city does not complete the same, and it turns out, in the light of subsequent events and subsequent experiences, that the improvement was an injudicious undertaking, the taxpayer can recover from the city the money thus injudiciously spent in the abortive enterprise. On the same principle, if a general tax of, say, five mills on the dollar, was levied to build a court house, and the money was all spent in building a court house on such a foolish plan that before it was completed it fell down and became a total wreck, any taxpayer who paid his part of the tax could immediately recover it from the county.
There is no difference in this respect betAveen a special tax on property specially benefited and a general tax on all the property in the city or county. Each is levied by. the same sovereign power. That power acts in its sovereign capacity, not in its private or contractual capacity, in levying such a tax, and therefore is not liable for the failure of the tax to bring any benefit to him who pays it. True, the special tax is levied on the supposition that the party paying it is benefited to an amount equal to the amount of the tax. But the question of whether he is or will be thus benefited is tried at the time the assessment is made, and cannot be subsequently reviewed in an action brought to recover the tax after it is paid, *391merely because the improvement was injudiciously undertaken. Of course, where the assessment district and the improvements are changed after the tax is levied and collected, so that one taxpayer has paid more than his share, he may recover the excess. Such .was the Strickland case. But here he is allowed to recover taxes collected and squandered in the construction of abortive improvements. A part of the tax so collected has not been expended, and I concede that plaintiff may recover such part; but the tax was not collected with an implied warranty that it would bring to the taxpayer the benefit contemplated, and for the portion of it which has been spent he has, in my opinion, no claim against the city.