City of University City v. AT & T Wireless Services, Inc.
This text of 203 S.W.3d 197 (City of University City v. AT & T Wireless Services, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
This is an appeal of the trial court’s dismissal of appellants’ consolidated claims that the “Municipal Telecommunications Business License Tax Simplification Act” (“Act”), codified at 92.074 to 92.095, RSMo Supp.2005,1 is unconstitutional in the manner in which it regulates and prohibits collection by municipalities of business license taxes on telecommunications companies for wireless service already provided by those companies before the law was enacted.
Appellants, St. Louis County, the City of University City, and various other municipalities (collectively “the Cities”), filed suits, which were consolidated by the circuit court in September 2005.2 The suits were filed against numerous telecommunications companies, hereinafter referred to collectively as “Respondents.”3 After the governor signed the Act in July 2005, Respondents filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings or to dismiss the Cities’ petition for declaratory and other relief.
In October 2005, the circuit court granted Respondents’ motion to dismiss, declaring that House Bill 209 was constitutional and that it required dismissal of the consolidated case “without further showing.” It further declared that Respondents were immune from past tax liability and then [199]*199dismissed the Cities’ original and amended petitions with prejudice.
The issues presented are substantially the same as those in City of Springfield v. Sprint Spectrum, L.P., 203 S.W.3d 177, 2006 WL 2257073 (Mo. banc 2006), in which Springfield similarly asserts that the trial court erred in dismissing its suit for unpaid license taxes based on Sprint’s claim that wireless service is not telephone service and that liability for wireless service taxes has been eliminated by the Act. In City of Springfield, with which this case was consolidated for purposes of oral argument, this Court held that section 92.086.10 is a special law in violation of the Missouri Constitution, art. III, sec. 40(30). Further, as this Court also noted in City of Springfield, because section 92.092 provides that if any substantive provision of sections 92.074 to 92.089 is invalid all such sections are invalid, sections 92.074 to 92.089 are invalid in their entirety. City of Springfield’s holding applies equally here. The case is remanded for further proceedings in light of that decision.4
The judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded.
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203 S.W.3d 197, 2006 Mo. LEXIS 93, 2006 WL 2257066, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-university-city-v-at-t-wireless-services-inc-mo-2006.