Singer Manufacturing Company v. Wright/Opinion of the Court

by Stephen Johnson Field

United States Supreme Court

141 U.S. 696

Singer Manufacturing Company  v.  Wright

We are relieved from a consideration of the interesting questions presented as to the validity of the legislation of Georgia levying a license tax upon dealers in sewing-machines, arising from the alleged discrimination made between retail dealers who are individuals and retail dealers who are companies, or wholesale dealers in such machines, where the tax required has not been paid by the manufacturing companies, as the taxes to enjoin the collection of which this suit was instituted have been paid by the complainant since the decree dismissing the bill was entered. This appears from the certificate of the comptroller general and the representation of the attorney general of the state, accompanied by copies of the writs of execution on which they were collected, with the receipts of the sheriff indorsed thereon. The taxes being paid, the further prosecution of this suit to enjoin their collection would present only a moot question, upon which we have neither the right nor the inclination to express an opinion.

This subject was considered somewhat at length in Little v. Bowers, 134 U.S. 547, 10 Sup. Ct. Rep. 620. The payment of the taxes was, it is true, made under protest, the complainant declaring at the time that they were illegal, and that it was not liable for them; that the payment was made under compulsion of the writs; and that it intended to demand, sue for, and recover back the amounts paid. If this enforced collection and protest were sufficient to preserve to the complainant the right to proceed for the restitution of the money upon proof of the illegality of the taxes, such redress must be sought in an action at law. It does not continue in existence the equitable remedy by injunction which was sought in the present suit. The equitable ground for the relief prayed ceased with the payment of the taxes. The appeal must therefore be dismissed, and it is so ordered.

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