Garrison v. Tillinghast

Citations

• 18 Cal. 404
• 1861 Cal. LEXIS 212

Syllabus

<p>Owhbbs or agents of steamers running between San Francisco and ÍTew York who purchased stamps from the defendant, as Treasurer of the city and county of San Francisco, to be placed on the passage tickets issued, cannot recover back the money paid for such stamps on the ground that the Act of 1857 as amended by the Act of 1858 stood on the statute book, and declared that such tickets should not be admitted in evidence in any Court or be available in law or equity unless stamped as required, and hence that the tickets could not be sold tó passengers without the stamps. The influence exerted by these provisions of the statute does not constitute that kind of compulsion or coercion which the law recognizes as sufficient to render the payment in a legal sense involuntary. There was no compulsion or coercion on the part of the defendant. The stamps are by the law deposited with him to be sold to applicants.</p> <p>The compulsion or coercion which is sufficient in law to render a payment involuntary, must come from the party to whom or by whose direction the payment is made, and arise from the exercise or threatened exercise of some power, possessed, or supposed to be possessed by him, over the person or property of the party making the payment.</p> <p>Whether these provisions of the statute be constitutional or not, does not affect the question of plaintiffs’ right to recover back Ms money. If they are constitutional, then there is no basis for the action; if they are unconstitutional, and the plaintiffs were ignorant of tMs at the time, the case becomes only one where a recovery is sought, because a payment is made under a mistake of law, a ground which cannot avail; but if the plaintiffs knew the act to be unconstitutional, as they protested it was, then the case is only an attempt to recover an illegal demand, voluntarily paid, knowing it to be illegal at the time, and is not entitled to any consideration.</p>