In Re St. Joseph Lead Company

352 S.W.2d 656
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJanuary 8, 1962
Docket48688
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 352 S.W.2d 656 (In Re St. Joseph Lead Company) 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.

Bluebook
In Re St. Joseph Lead Company, 352 S.W.2d 656 (Mo. 1962).

Opinion

352 S.W.2d 656 (1961)

In the Matter of the Assessment of: ST. JOSEPH LEAD COMPANY, a Corporation.
ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY, Missouri, School District of Flat River, Missouri, School District of Doe Run, Missouri, School District of Elvins, Missouri, and School District of Esther, Missouri, Respondents,
v.
STATE TAX COMMISSION of Missouri, James M. Robertson, John O. Williams, J. Ralph Hutchinson, Commissioners of the Missouri State Tax Commission, and St. Joseph Lead Company, Respondents, St. Joseph Lead Company, Appellant.

No. 48688.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

December 11, 1961.
Motions for Rehearing or to Transfer Modify Opinion Denied January 8, 1962.
Opinion Modified Motion January 8, 1962.

*657 W. Oliver Rasch, Bonne Terre, John S. Marsalek, Moser, Marsalek, Carpenter, Cleary, Jaeckel & Hamilton, St. Louis, for appellant, St. Joseph Lead Co.

Raymond R. Roberts, Pros. Atty., St. Francois County, Charles G. Hyler, Asst. Pros. Atty., St. Francois County, Farmington, Rush H. Limbaugh, Cape Girardeau, for respondents.

Motions for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court en Banc or to Modify Opinion Denied January 8, 1962.

Opinion Modified on Court's Own Motion January 8, 1962.

BARRETT, Commissioner.

This appeal by St. Joseph Lead Company involves the valuation of its property in St. Francois County for the purposes of taxation. In general the property consists of approximately 45,000 acres of land, known as "The Lead Belt," in which the company has both mineral and surface rights. The appellant's principal business in St. Francois County is the mining, processing and milling of lead and its by-products. In the several areas devoted to mining and milling ore, some of them for almost 100 years, there are all the vast installations and complicated machinery necessarily incident to these operations. The 45,000 acre area is comprised of hundreds of tracts of land acquired over the years and that not devoted to mining consists of farmland, some timberland, and some of it has been developed into business and residential property, and a part of all these properties or interests has been sold or leased with mineral rights reserved.

As of January 1, 1959, the assessor and, after applications for review, other taxing authorities of St. Francois County valued and assessed the St. Joseph Lead Company's property at $12,205,100.00. The company appealed to the State Tax Commission and on December 21, 1959, the commission reduced the assessment to $6,657,720.00 and the company immediately paid its taxes for that year based upon that valuation. In January 1960, St. Francois County and four school districts, proceeding under the Administrative Procedure and Review Act, filed a petition for review in the Circuit Court of St. Francois County and that court found that the State Tax Commission had abused its discretion in refusing to grant the county and the school districts a continuance and that its decision was "wholly unsupported by and (is) contrary to competent and substantial evidence upon the whole record." Whereupon the circuit court reversed the finding and order of the tax commission and fixed the assessed valuation of the lead company's property as it had been fixed by the St. Francois County Board of Equalization, at $12,205,100.00. The St. Joseph Lead Company has, of course, appealed to this court from that judgment.

*658 At the outset it should be noted that the appellant has briefed thirty-one separate points and in reply the respondents have cited long lists of cases, fifty-one under one point and thirty-one under another and so on. The record is long and the case as a whole extremely complex but at this stage of the proceeding some of these numerous points have indeed become minor if not irrelevant and some of the analogies the parties would draw from the cases dealing with common-law pleading and practice are apparent but not particularly helpful or persuasive. At this juncture questions concerning the sufficiency of petitions to the board of equalization, to the tax commission, or to the circuit court on review, notice to school districts and similar matters (May Department Stores Co. v. State Tax Commission (Mo.) 308 S.W.2d 748) only tend to confuse essential and meritorious problems. The numerous points, the lists of cases, the analogies and the record have all been dutifully considered with such understanding of several very technical and complex subjects as limited capacity and obviously limited technical knowledge permit. In this opinion only those matters deemed necessary to a disposition of the appeal and the exhaustion of this court's function will be considered in detail.

The appellant's first point is that the circuit court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the respondents' petition for review, therefore it is urged that the court erred in overruling its motions to dismiss the review petition. The principal reason asserted for this proposition is that since the State Tax Commission, on appeal from the county board of equalization, fixed the valuation and reduced the assessment the respondents, the county and school districts, are conclusively bound by the order and "had no right to a review of the decision." In part this argument appears to be particularly directed against the school districts who were permitted to intervene before the tax commission. But at this point in the proceeding this particular argument and the contention that the prosecuting attorney, "when (so) called upon," is charged with the duty "to represent the commission in any litigation which it may wish to institute or in which it may become involved in the discharge of its duties" (V.A.M.S. § 138.410(2)) are lacking in persuasive supporting force. It is not necessary to say whether the commission erred in permitting the intervention of the school districts or to consider whether they could employ expert witnesses to make appraisals. Before the tax commission, in the circuit court and here, the county represents whatever interest or rights the several school districts may have had and their status or rights are now immaterial and certainly unnecessary to a determination of the basic problems involved upon this appeal. And so it is with the prosecuting attorney, he may on occasion be charged with the duty of assisting or representing the tax commission but he is also charged with the duty of representing the political unit in which he was elected, the county. V.A.M.S. § 56.070. And in this proceeding the tax commission, if it needed representation, and the public, other than the public interest represented by the county, were represented by an assistant attorney general (V.A.M.S. § 138.410(2)) and there was no basic conflict of interest and all public parties and their separate public interests were represented. And of course the "private rights" and interests of the appellant, who after all instituted the review proceedings before the board of equalization and the tax commission, were indeed adequately represented by respected counsel.

In its essence the appellant's contention that the county and school districts do not have the right, under the Administrative Procedure and Review Act (Ch. 536 RSMo 1959, V.A.M.S.), to a judicial review of a decision of the tax commission lowering valuations is that the constitution and statutes have provided a complete and comprehensive plan or scheme for the review and correction of tax assessments.

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Bluebook (online)
352 S.W.2d 656, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-st-joseph-lead-company-mo-1962.