State of Louisiana Folsom v. Mayor of the City of New Orleans/Opinion of the Court

by Stephen Johnson Field

United States Supreme Court

109 U.S. 285

State of Louisiana Folsom  v.  Mayor of the City of New Orleans

The relators are the holders of two judgments against the city of New Orleans,-one for $26,850, the other for $2,000. Both were recovered in the courts of Louisiana,-the first in June, 1877, by the relators; the second in June, 1874, by parties who assigned it to them. Both judgments were for damages done to the property of the plaintiffs therein by a mob or riotous assemblage of people in the year 1873. A statute of the state made municipal corporations liable for damages thus caused within their limits. Rev. St. La. 1870, § 2453. The judgments were duly registered in the office of the comptroller of the city, pursuant to the provisions of the act known as No. 5 of the extra session of 1870, and the present proceeding was taken by the relators to compel the authorities of the city to provide for their payment. At the time the injuries complained of were committed, and one of the judgments was recovered, the city of New Orleans was authorized to levy and collect a tax upon property within its limits of $1.75 upon every $100 of its assessed value. At the time the other judgment was recovered this limit of taxation was reduced to $1.50 on every $100 of the assessed value of the property. By the constitution of the state adopted in 1879 the power of the city to impose taxes on property within its limits was further restricted to 10 mills on the dollar of the valuation. The effect of this last limitation is to prevent the relators, who are not allowed to issue executions against the city, from collecting their judgments, as the funds receivable from the tax thus authorized to be levied are exhausted by the current expenses of the city, which must first be met. The relators sought in the state courts to compel a levy by the city of taxes to meet their judgments at the rate permitted when the damages were done for which the judgments were obtained. They contended that the subsequent limitation imposed upon its power violated that clause of the federal constitution which prohibits a state from passing a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and also that clause of the fourteenth amendment which forbids a state to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The supreme court of the state, reversing the lower court, decided against the relators, and the same contention is renewed here.

The right to reimbursement for damages caused by a mob or riotous assemblage of people is not founded upon any contract between the city and the sufferers. Its liability for the damages is created by a law of the legislature, and can be withdrawn or limited at its pleasure. Municipal corporations are instrumentalities of the state for the convenient administration of government within their limits. They are invested with authority to establish a police to guard against disturbance; and it is their duty to exercise their authority so as to prevent violence from any cause, and particularly from mobs and riotous assemblages. It has therefore been generally considered as a just burden cast upon them to require them to make good any loss sustained from the acts of such assemblages which they should have repressed. The imposition has been supposed to create, in the holders of property liable to taxation within their limits, an interest to discourage and prevent any movements tending to such violent proceedings. But, however considered, the imposition is simply a measure of legislative policy, in no respect resting upon contract, and subject, like all other measures of policy, to any change the legislature may see fit to make, either in the extent of the liability or in the means of its enforcement. And its character is not at all changed by the fact that the amount of loss, in pecuniary estimation, has been ascertained and established by the judgments rendered. The obligation to make indemnity created by the statute has no more element of contract in it because merged in the judgments than it had previously. The term 'contract' is used in the constitution in its ordinary sense, as signifying the agreement of two or more minds, for considerations proceeding from one to the other, to do or not to do certain acts. Mutual assent to its terms is of its very essence.

A judgment for damages, estimated in money, is sometimes called by text writers a specialty or contract of record, because it establishes a legal obligation to pay the amount recovered; and, by a fiction of law, a promise to pay is implied where such legal obligation exists. It is on this principle that an action ex contractu will lie upon a judgment. Chit. Cont. (Perkins Ed.) 87. But this fiction cannot convert a transaction wanting the assent of parties into one which necessarily implies it. Judgments for torts are usually the result of violent contests, and, as observed by the court below, are imposed upon the losing party by a higher authority against his will and protest. The prohibition of the federal constitution was intended to secure the observance of good faith in the stipulation of parties against any state action. Where a transaction is not based upon any assent of parties, it cannot be said that any faith is pledged with respect to it; and no case arises for the operation of the prohibition. Garrison v. City of New York, 21 Wall. 203. There is therefore nothing in the liabilities of the city, by reason of which the relators recovered their judgments, that precluded the state from changing the taxing power of the city, even though the taxation be so limited as to postpone the payment of the judgments.

The clause of the fourteenth amendment cited is equally inoperative to restrain the action of the state. Conceding that the judgments, though founded upon claims to indemnity for unlawful acts of mobs or riotous assemblages, are property in the sense that they are capable of ownership and may have a pecuniary value, the relators cannot be said to be deprived of them so long as they continue an existing liability against the city. Although the present limitation of the taxing power of the city may prevent the receipt of sufficient funds to pay the judgments, the legislature of the state may, upon proper appeal, make other provision for their satisfaction. The judgments may also, perhaps, be used by the relators or their assigns as offsets to demands of the city; at least, it is possible that they may be available in various ways. Be this as it may, the relators have no such vested right in the taxing power of the city as to render its diminution by the state, to a degree affecting the present collection of their judgments, a deprivation of their property in the sense of the constitutional prohibition. A party cannot be said to be deprived of his property in a judgment because at the time he is unable to collect it.

The cases in which we have held that the taxing power of a municipality continues, notwithstanding a legislative act of limitation or repeal, are founded upon contracts; and decisions in them do not rest upon the principle that the party affected in the enforcement of his contract rights has been thereby deprived of any property, but upon the principle that the remedies for the enforcement of his contracts, existing when they were made, have been by such legislation impaired. The usual mode in which municipal bodies meet their pecuniary contracts is by taxation. And when, upon the faith that such taxation will be levied contracts have been made, the constitutional inhibition has been held to restrain the state from repealing or diminishing the power of the corporation so as to deprive the holder of the contract of all adequate and efficacious remedy. As we have often said, the power of taxation belongs exclusively to the legislative department of the government, and the extent to which it shall be delegated to a municipal body is a matter of discretion, and may be limited or revoked at the pleasure of the legislature. But, as we held in Wolff v. New Orleans, 103 U.S. 358, and repeated in Louisiana v. Pilsbury, 105 U.S. 278, in both cases, by the unanimous judgment of the court, the legislation in that respect is subject to this qualification, which attends all state legislation, that it—

'shall not conflict with the prohibitions of the constitution of the United States, and, among other things, shall not operate directly upon contracts of the corporation, so as to impair their obligation by abrogating or lessening the means of their enforcement. Legislation producing this latter result, not indirectly as a consequence of legitimate measures taken, as will sometimes happen, but directly by operating upon those means, is prohibited by the constitution, and must be disregarded,-treated as if never enacted,-by all courts recognizing the constitution as the paramount law of the land. This doctrine has been repeatedly asserted by this court when attempts have been made to limit the power of taxation of a municipal body, upon the faith of which contracts have been made, and by means of which alone they could be performed. * * * However great the control of the legislature over the corporation while it is in existence, it must be exercised in subordination to the principle which secures the inviolability of contracts.'

This doctrine can have no application to claims against municipal corporations founded upon torts of the character mentioned. Whether or not the state, in so limiting the power of the city to raise funds by taxation that it cannot satisfy all claims against it recognized by law, though not resting upon contract, does a wrong to the relators, which a wise policy and a just sense of public honor should not sanction, is not a question upon which this court can pass. If the action of the state does not fall within any prohibition of the federal constitution, it lies beyond the reach of our authority.

The question of the effect of legislation upon the means of enforcing an ordinary judgment of damages for a tort, rendered against the person committing it, in favor of the person injured, may involve other considerations, and is not presented by the case before us. Judgment affirmed.

Notes