Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. v. Miller

Citations

• 114 U.S. 176
• 5 S. Ct. 813
• 29 L. Ed. 121
• 1885 U.S. LEXIS 1749

Syllabus

<p>The provision in the act of the Legislature of West Virginia incorporating the ■ Covington & Ohio Railroad Company that “no taxation upon the property of the said company shall be imposed by the State until the. profits of said Company shall amount to ten per cent, on the capital ” was personal to tha,t company and did not inhere in the property so as to pass by a transfer of it.</p> <p>Immunity from taxation conferred on a corporation by legislation is not a franchise. Morgan v. Louisiana, 08 TJ. S. 217, quoted and affirmed.</p> <p>A statute of West Virginia regulated sales under foreclosure of mortgages by railroad companies, and provided that “ such sale and conveyance shall pass to the purchaser at the sale, not only the works and property of the company, as they were at the time of making the deed of trust or mortgage, but any works which the company may, after that time and before the sale, have constructed ; ” and that “upon such conveyance to the purchaser, the said company shall ipso faoto be dissolved ; ” and further, that “ said purchaser shall forthwith be a corporation” and “shall succeed to all such franchises, rights and privileges ; . . -as would have been had . . . by the first company but for 'such sale and conveyance : ” Meld, (1) That purchasers thus becoming a corporation derived the corporate existence and powers of the corporation from this act, and were subject to generad laws as to corporations then in force ; (2) That an immunity from taxation enjoyed by the former corporation was not embraced in the words of description in the act, and did not pass to the new corporation.</p>