Missouri ex rel. Harshman v. Winterbottom/Opinion of the Court

by Samuel Freeman Miller

United States Supreme Court

123 U.S. 215

Missouri ex rel. Harshman  v.  Winterbottom

tion of the court was right. While there are other reasons, perhaps, why this petition is insufficient to sustain the action, the two principal ones are-First, that the actual plaintiff, Harshman, for whose use this action was brought, shows no relation of contract or legal obligation between Winterbottom and himself on which he has a right to bring this suit; second, that the obligation of the defendants is to the state for the collection of the state taxes, and to the county for the collection of the county taxes. There are no state taxes in the case. The county taxes were collected and paid over to the county treasury in the class of current obligations of the county, which the law recognizes as valid payment of taxes; and the county court, to whom the obligation of accounting for the taxes collected, or for failure to collect taxes, was due, has settled with Winterbottom, and accepted its own warrants issued upon the treasurer as a full and satisfactory payment and discharge of that obligation. This formal accounting and settlement between the county court and the defendant, Winterbottom, as set out by the plaintiff himself in his own declaration, is one which the county court undoubtedly had a right to make, and, in paying over these county warrants to the treasury of the county, and in receiving the acknowledgment of the county court that he was fully discharged from his obligations in that respect, he presents a defense to this action which nothing in the declaration removes or invalidates. He had a right to receive county warrants in payment of taxes. The law in express terms declares it to be his duty to receive them. Whether they were received by him under the exact circumstances which the law directs as to original ownership or assignment to the party who presented them, were matters for which he might have been called to account by the county court, and that body, in making the settlement with him, might possibly have had the power to reject warrants so received in making up the account; but inasmuch as they were actual obligations of the county, payable out of the county funds, and receivable in discharge of taxes if properly tendered, the county court, which, by law, has full charge of all the financial operations of the county, could waive any such irregularity in the time and mode of presenting their own obligations, and credit the collector with them in the account.

We are of opinion that this settlement with the county court is of itself a sufficient bar to the present action on the collector's bond. If this were not so, and if, as the plaintiff's counsel contends, the payment of these taxes by the county warrants thus irregularly presented is void, then the tax-payer himself is not discharged. He had no more right to tender the county warrants in payment of his taxes, under the circumstances mentioned in the petition, than the collector had to receive them. If the act is a void act as to the one, it is a void act as to the other; and the right of the plaintiff to sue the tax-payer is much clearer than his right to sue the collector, because the tax-payer owes his taxes yet, having never lawfully paid them, while the ollector has settled his accounts with the authority which had a right to accept these county warrants and has been discharged from further obligation. If he can sue the collector on his official bond, and the sureties who are bound with him on that bond, why can he not sue the tax-payers? The obligation to pay taxes, and the obligation to pay the taxes when collected into the treasury, is the same, and bears exactly the same relation to the right of Harshman to get his money out of the county treasury.

The truth is there is no contract or legal obligation of the collector in that matter to Harshman. Harshman is a creditor of the county of Knox. He has no more right to interfere between that county and its collector as to the manner in which that official shall discharge his duties, except perhaps in case of fraud or conspiracy, or by way of mandamus, than he would have as a creditor of any indvidual to interfere between him and his debtors. Where such things are permitted at all, it is by way of a garnishee process or attachment, which is regulated by statute, or by a bill in chancery. The proceeding here has nothing of that character. The want of privity between Harshman and the obligors in the bond on which they are sued is established by the decision of this court in Bank v. Ward, 100 U.S. 202. It does not appear that if all the taxes had been paid in money which the plaintiff alleges were erroneously paid in warrants, that when that money was paid into the treasury, the relator would have been entitled to any of it. The discretion of the county court, and indeed its obligation to provide for the current necessities of the county, could not be interfered with by any one to direct the payment of this money to that particular debt. We do not see, therefore, that he was damaged, certainly not damaged in a manner which the law can recognize, by the collection of these taxes in warrants instead of money. East St. Louis v. Zebley, 110 U.S. 321, 4 Sup. Ct. Rep. 21; Clay Co. v. McAleer, 115 U.S. 616, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 199.

The judgment of the circuit court for the Eastern district of Missouri is affirmed.

Notes