City of Chicago v. Phoenix Insurance

Citations

• 126 Ill. 276
• 18 N.E. 668

Syllabus

<p>1. Eobeign insurance companies—license—power of municipal corporations—the statute construed. Cities incorporated under the general law have no.power to pass an ordinance prohibiting foreign insurance companies from insuring property therein without first procuring a license. Such power is not conferred by the proviso in section 30 of the Insurance law of 1879.</p> <p>2. The provisions of section 30 of the Insurance law of 1879 were intended to establish a plan, general in character, under which the net receipts of foreign insurance companies may be taxed in the same manner and at the same rate of taxation as other personal property in the State, and the taxes so imposed are to be in lieu of all town and municipal licenses, and its effect is to repeal any and all laws in conflict therewith. The proviso therein can not be construed to confer the licensing, power by implication.</p> <p>3. Police poweb—in cities, etc.—what subjects embraced therein—imposing license fees for reverme—legislative control. An ordinance of a city prohibiting foreign insurance companies from doing business in its limits without taking out a license, and paying two dollars upon the $100 of their gross receipts in such city, being for the purpose of raising revenue, can not be sustained as the exercise of the police power conferred by its charter.</p> <p>i. The legislature has the undoubted right, whenever it sees fit, to divest cities and villages of the police powers it may have conferred, and resume the exercise of the same itself.</p> <p>5. Statutes—proviso—of its proper office. The office of a proviso in a statute is not to confer power, but is generally to except something from the enacting clause, or to qualify or restrain its generality, or to exclude some possible ground of misinterpretation of its extending to cases not intended to be included.</p>