Gast Realty & Investment Co. v. Schneider Granite Co.

Citations

• 240 U.S. 55
• 36 S. Ct. 254
• 60 L. Ed. 523
• 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1424

Syllabus

<p>The legislature may create taxing districts to meet the expense of ■local improvements without encountering the Fourteenth Amendment unless its action is palpably arbitrary or a plain abuse.</p> <p>The law does not attempt an imaginary exactness or go beyond reasonable probabilities in establishing taxing districts.</p> <p>A law establishing a taxing district under which there is no reasonable presumption that substantial justice will be done, but under which parties will probably be disproportionately, taxed cannot stand as constitutional against one actually so taxed.</p> <p>The ordinance of St. Louis authorized by the charter of that city levying part of the cost of paving on property fronting on the street but based on area without providing for equal depth of the assessment district results necessarily, and not'merely incidentally, in subjecting owners of property having greater depth than that adjoining them to greater and disproportionate, taxation and is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.</p> <p>This decision is limited to the particular ordinance before the court and to those who, like the property owner in this case, have suffered • from inequalities which have no justification in law.</p> <p>259 Missouri, 153, reversed.</p>