Court Opinion

ID: 6467137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-06-26 14:07:23.680654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:53:42.436601
License: Public Domain

Bantz, J. (dissenting). — I can not agree with my associates in the conclusion reached in this case. The inquiry is not as to what has been granted, but is as to what has been exempted from taxation. The grant is the right of way, including necessary grounds for station houses, shops, depots, etc. It is not material whether that grant conveyed the ownership of the soil, or only an easement. It is not everything which the grantee erected thereon or affixed thereto which is exempt, but the thing exempt is the right of way. While it may be that this exemption is broad enough to extend beyond the mere ownership or use of the soil, and may cover such improvements as the roadbed, ties, rails, culverts, and bridges, which are affixed to the right of way, and necessary to the use of it as such, — a proposition by no means clear — I am of the opinion that the exemption does not cover other improvements not essential to the use of the right of way, however convenient and necessary such improvements may be to the orderly and economical conduct of the company’s business. Nor do I believe that such exemption extends to the additional grounds for station houses, depots, workshops, etc., or to such improvements thereon. Portland S. & P. R. Co. v. Saco, 60 Me. 196; People v. Commissioners of Taxes, 82 N. Y. 459. If the exemption of a right of way can cover station houses, workshops, and depots, there is nothing to prevent a like exempting from extending to dwelling houses for lodging employees; or hotels for entertaining patrons, when erected on the right of way. If the exemption extends so far, it must comprehend something more than the right of way, and something by implication, and liberal implication at that. Some stress has been laid upon the point that the additional grounds for station houses, shops, etc., are a part of the right of way. But in my opinion this is not well founded. The act does not make the additional grounds a part of the right of way, but the act grants the right, “including” all necessary ground for station hoúses, etc. Grounds additional to the right of way are included in the grant, but, when we look into the clause exempting from taxation, we find it does not extend to all the property granted, but only, and in terms, to the “right of Avay.” It has been settled by a long line of decisions, from U. S. v. Arredondo, 8 Pet. 738, and the Charles River Bridge Case, 14 Pet. 420, that grants from the sovereign are to be construed strictly against the grantee, who takes nothing by implication, or which is not manifestly intended by the clear terms of the grant; and this rule applies as well in favor of third, persons as it does in favor of the power making the grant. This rule is applied for a stronger reason, and with greater strictness, when the grant involves a surrender of one of the great powers essential to government, like that of taxation. U. S. v. Denver & R. G. R’y Co., 150 U. S. 1. In a recent case the supreme court of the United States say: “The taxing power is essential to the existence of government, and can not be held to have been relinquished in any instance unless the deliberate purpose of the state to that effect, clearly appears. The surrender of a power so vital can not Be left to inference or conceded, in the presence of doubt; and, when the language used admits of reasonable contention, the conclusion is inevitable in favor of the reservation of the power.” Railroad Co. v. Alsbrook, 146 U. S. 279. It does not matter whether the grant which is to operate as a relinquishment of the power of taxation is one made by a state legislature, or by congress; its terms are subject to the same rule of interpretation. And, unless congress has exempted this property from taxation, the territorial' legislature has the same power to tax it which it has to tax like property of other owners. Reading the act creating this exemption in the light of established judicial decisions, I am of the opinion that the exemption does not extend to the additional grounds for station houses, depots, shops, etc., nor to improvements thereon, nor to telegraph lines and poles on such right of way.