Liquidating Commissioners of the New Orleans Warehouse Co. v. Marrero

Citations

• 106 La. 130

Syllabus

<p>Syllabus.</p> <p>1. Bach annual assessment of property for taxation is a separate entity, distinct from the assessment for the next, and subsequent years. What may be a proper valuation one year may not be the next year, and, thus, a judgment decreeing at what figure a piece of property should be assessed last year for purposes of taxation is not res judicata as against another valuation placed thereon by the proper authorities this year.</p> <p>2. The law contemplates that each year a tax-payer’s property is subjected to excessive assessment he should sue, and this is shown by the circumstance that he is not permitted to sue to reduce an assessment unless he shall have made his complaint seasonably before the Board of Reviewers and failed of relief there.</p> <p>3. And this bringing of the matter before the Board of Reviewers must be done each time his property is assessed — that is to say each year — and his action to test the correctness of his assessment, if he fail before the Board of Reviewers, must be instituted on or before the first day of November of the year in which the assessment is made.</p> <p>4. The commission of ten per cent, upon the amount of taxes to be collected, allowed by statute to the attorney representing the tax-collector, and to be paid by the unsuccessful tax resister, is regarded as costs.</p> <p>5. The right to costs as depending upon the nature of the suit, or upon other circumstances, has always been within the regulation and control of the legislature, exercising its discretionary power, not oppressively to either party, but as the best interests of the litigants and of the public may appear to it to demand.</p> <p>6. And the constitutionality of statutes allowing one party only to a litigation to recover an attorney’s fee, as part of the judgment, in particular classes of actions selected by the legislature, appears to have been upheld by the courts of most of the States, in which it has been challenged.</p> <p>7. The case of Ry