State v. American Sugar Refining Co.

106 La. 553
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedNovember 15, 1901
DocketNo. 13,967
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 106 La. 553 (State v. American Sugar Refining Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. American Sugar Refining Co., 106 La. 553 (La. 1901).

Opinions

The Opinion of the Court was delivered by

Nicholls, C. J.

On Application for Rehearing by

Blanchard, J.

Statement op the Case.

Nicholls, O. J. In 1898 the Legislature of the State of Louisiáña enacted a general license law, which is found in the acts of that year, under the number one hundred and seventy-one (171). The title of the act was: “An act to levy, collect and enforce payment of an annual license tax upon all persons, associations of persons, or business firms and corporations. pursuing any trade, profession, vocation, calling or business (except those who are expressly excepted from such license tax by Article 229 of the Constitution); and prescribing the mode and method in which certain persons subject to license shall make report of their business.

The first section of the act levied an annual license tax for the year 1899, and for each subsequent year, upon each person, association of persons, or business firms or corporations, pursuing any trade, profession, vocation, calling or business, subject to license under Article 229 of the Constitution.

The second section enacted “that on the 2nd day of January, 1899, and each subsequent year, each tax-collector throughout the State shall begin to collect and shall collect as fast as possible from each of the persons or business firms, association of persons, and corporations pursuing within his district or parish any trade, profession, calling or business, a license tax, as hereinafter graduated.”

[555]*555The third section enacted that “the annual licenses for all the kinds of business hereinafter named, except as afterwards provided, shall be graduated in twenty-five classes.”

The General Assembly in subsequent sections then enumerated separately different callings and occupations by name, placing each one into classes and affixing to each of the classes a certain license, as, for instance, “manufactories, banking business,” etc., etc.

The third section of the act fixed the licenses for manufacturers in general terms, and for banks and banking associations, corporations or agencies, under a classification.

The tenth section fixed, under classification, the license for omnibus or regular coach or herdic business, collection agencies or agents for the collection of moneys, accounts, notes, etc., and for every business for transporting money, merchandise or other articles, by express or transfer, of operating one or more boats or tug-boats, or keeping a wárehouse or storage-room or landing where goods are received and delivered.

The twelfth section fixed, under classification, licenses for the business of keeping a theatre, opera house, amphitheatre, academy of music, cancan or other dancing establishments, museums, menageries, circus or traveling shows, balls and entertainments, railroad or steamship ticket sellers, peddlers, hawkers.

The fourteenth section fixed, under classification, the licenses for the carrying on the business of agencies for steamboats, draying, trucking, keeping cabs, carriages, hacks or horses for hire, undertakers or lessees of toll bridges and ferries, master builders, stevedores, bill posting or tacking, contractors and mechanics who employ assistants, lawyers, doctors, dentists, photographers, oculists, jewelers, and all other business not provided for in the act.

The license for “refining sugar and molasses, or either of them,” was placed in the eleventh section of the act, included among other occupations or businesses therein provided for. These occupations or businesses were divided into twenty different classes. The first class was based on the amount of gross annual receipts of two million five hundred thousand dollars and over, for which the license was fixed at six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, and the twentieth class was based upon gross annual receipts being less than fifteen thousand dollars, for which the license was fixed at twenty dollars.

In 1900 the General Assembly passed the act known as Act No. 103 [556]*556of that year. Its title was “An act to amend and re-enact Sections 10, 12 and 14 of Act No. 171 of 1898, entitled ‘An act to levy, collect and enforce payment of an annual license tax upon all persons, associations of persons or business firms and corporations, pursuing any trade, profession, vocation, calling or business, except those who are expressly excepted from such license tax by Article 229 of the Constitution, and prescribing the mode and method in which certain persons subject to license shall make report of their business.’ ”

The first section is as follows:

“Be it enacted,” etc., * * * “That Section 10 of Act No. 171 of 1898, entitled, ‘ An act to ’ (giving the full title of the act) ‘ be amended and re-enacted to read as follows: Section 10 — Be it enacted,” etc. * * * (Here follows the section as amended and reenacted.)
At the close of Section 10, as re-enacted, are the words: “Provided, further, that for carrying on the business of refining sugar and molasses, or either of them, the annual State license shall be one-eighth of one per cent, upon the gross annual receipts of such business.”

The second section of the act of 1900 declares that: “All laws or parts of laws in conflict with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed.” The title of the act, as has been stated, was not only to amend Section 10, but Section 12 and Section lit-; but there is nothing in the body of the act which declares that either of those sections were therein “repealed,” amended or re-enacted.

The business of “refining sugar and molasses, or either of them,” was referred to in Section 10 only in the "proviso” at the end of the section. It is not brought in as one of the businesses the licenses for which were being provided for, originally fixed and classified in the section. That section provides a specified classification for tile licenses for the other occupations enumerated therein. The proviso fixes the license for “carrying on the business of refining sugar and molasses at one-eighth of one per cent, upon the gross annual receipts of such business.”

The present suit is one brought by the State through one of its tax-collectors to recover against the defendants the sum of twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars as a license tax for the year 1901.

It is alleged that defendant is engaged in the business of refining sugar and molasses in the Second District of New Orleans; that its [557]*557gross annual receipts from said business for the year 1900 exceeded $21,000,000; that defendant had taken out no State license for the year, and that the sum of $21,250 is due therefor; two per cent, per month interest from March 1, 1901, and ten per cent, interest on .principal and interest as attorney’s fees.

Defendant filed an exception of no cause of action, and an answer containing, first, a general denial. It admitted that it was carrying on the business of refining sugar and molasses, but denied that it refined any molasses, except such as is produced as an incident of the refining of sugar. It admitted that it had not taken out any license for the year 1901. It denied that its gross receipts from said business exceeded the sum of twenty-one millions of dollars for the year 1900.

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Bluebook (online)
106 La. 553, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-american-sugar-refining-co-la-1901.