Commercial Bank v. Rochester/Opinion of the Court

As the demurrer does not point out any special defect in the petition, and as there is no assignment of errors in the record of the proceedings in any of the State courts, we find great difficulty in ascertaining the ground on which the Court of Appeals decided the case.

It has been so often held by this court, that the question on which the plaintiff in error relies to give it jurisdiction, must appear to have been decided by the State court, that it has become one of the settled principles on that subject.

It is said in this case that the court must have decided in favor of the validity of the tax, which it is conceded would have given this court jurisdiction. But this does not appear either affirmatively or by necessary intendment. For the case may have been decided on the form of the remedy which the practice in the State courts required the plaintiff to adopt, or on the technical insufficiency of the pleading.

In this uncertainty of the record as an indication, we might, without going further, dismiss the case on that ground. But we are referred to decisions in the State court which hold that the remedy for illegal or excessive assessment is by certiorari, issued in that proceeding, and that as the modes of reviewing these assessments are in their nature judicial, the judgment is, until reversed or set aside, conclusive.

Undoubtedly the Court of Appeals of New York is the proper tribunal to decide this question, and as one of policy in the embarrassing matter of contesting tax levies, it is within the province of State law; and we are not authorized in this case to say that that court did not decide it correctly, or that it made any decision adverse to the exemption of the securities of the United States from State taxation.

In this respect the case is precisely in principle like that of The Insurance Co. v. The Treasurer. It is accordingly

DISMISSED FOR WANT OF JURISDICTION.