Heine v. Levee Commissioners

APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the District of Louisiana.

This was a suit in chancery brought by Heine and others, holders of bonds issued by what is called the board of levee commissioners of the levee district for the parishes of Carroll and Madison of the State of Louisiana. The board thus described was made a quasi corporation by the legislature of Louisiana, with authority to issue the bonds and provide for the payment of interest and principal by taxes levied upon the real and personal property within the district. The bill alleged a failure to levy these taxes and to pay the interest on any part of said bonds, that the persons duly appointed levee commissioners had pretended to resign their office for the purpose of evading this duty, and that the complainants had applied in vain to the judge of the District Court, who was by statute authorized to levy a tax on the alluvial lands to pay the bonds if the levee commissioners failed to do so. The prayer for relief was that the levee commissioners be required to assess and collect the tax necessary to pay the bonds and interest, and if, after reasonable time, they failed to do so, that the district judge be ordered to do the same; and for such other and further relief as the nature of the case required.

No judgment at law had been recovered on the bonds or any of them, nor any attempt to collect the money due by suit in the common-law court.

A demurrer to the bill was sustained in the Circuit Court, and the plaintiffs appealed from the decree of dismissal rendered on that demurrer.

Mr. Thomas Allen Clarke, for the appellants, contended:

That the commissioners having resigned could no longer in their corporate capacity be sued at law.

That there was a contract between the bondholders and the corporation not unlike an equitable mortgage; for that the contract was not simply an agreement to pay money but one to pay money out of a fund under the control of the commissioners; that it belonged specially to equity to enforce such a contract.

That it was part of the contract that the taxes should pay these bonds; that the holders had, therefore, a species of lien on the lands on which the taxes were to be laid; this again being a matter specially of equitable cognizance.

That though the suit was by a bill in equity, yet that it might be taken (other grounds of relief failing) as a petition for mandamus.

That the case, in short, was a very complicated case, such as the law afforded no relief for; and that one was to be worked out through equitable mechanism unless a shocking injustice was to be tolerated.

Messrs. S. R. Walker, W. Tunstall, and J. E. Leonard, contra.

Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.