New Orleans v. Warner

Citations

• 175 U.S. 120
• 20 S. Ct. 44
• 44 L. Ed. 96
• 1899 U.S. LEXIS 1552

Syllabus

<p>Following the decisions of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, this court holds that the drainage warrants of the city of New Orleans, in question in this case, being neither bills of exchange, nor promissory notes, nor notes payable to order or bearer, nor effects negotiable by indorsement or delivery, are not included within the terms of Article '3540 of the Civil Code of Louisiana, prescribing certain actions therein named; and are not prescribed by the statutes of that State.</p> <p>The city of New Orleans, having voluntarily assumed the obligations of a trustee with respect to the fund to be raised by the collection of drainage assessments, cannot set up the prescription contained in Article 3547 of the Code against an application which, as such trustee, it had undertaken and had failed to perform — the rule being well settled that, in an action by a cestui que trust agginst an express trustee, the statute of limitations has no application, and no length of time is a bar.</p> <p>It is immaterial whether the assessments against the city itself for the drainage of public property were reduced to judgments or not: by reducing its own claim to judgment, it neither ceased to be debtor nor trustee.</p> <p>The judgment and decree in Peake v. New Orleans, 139 U. S. 342, cannot be considered as a controlling authority in this case, the facts being different, as shown in the opinion of the court in this case; and it would be inequitable to permit the city to set up that decision as an excuse for its failure to collect these assessments.</p> <p>A judgment for taxes does not differ from any other judgment in respect to its conclusiveness, and the city of New Orleans cannot, after the lapse of more than twenty years, question its liability upon the judgments against it for the amount' of these assessments.</p> <p>It was the intention of the amendment of 1874 to the constitution of Louisiana, limiting the power of New Orleans to contract debts thereafter, to validate the issu