This is an action to recover city and county and state taxes for the fiscal year 1880-81, together with 5 per cent, penalties, and interest at 2 per cent, per month, amounting, in the aggregate, to nearly $500,000, of which aggregate about $236,000 is the amount of the taxes originally levied.
The action is brought under the statute of April 23,1880, prescribing a form of complaint, which requires the complaint to “describe the property as assessed.” The description of the property in the complaint, and consequently “as assessed,” is as follows:
“Seven thousand one hundred and twenty-five shares stock If evada Bank; 3,200 shares stock Pacific Mill and Mining Company mining stock; 250 shares stock Pacific Wood, Lumber, and Flume Company; 1,000 shares stock San Francisco Gas Company; 47¿- shares stock Giant Powder Company; 3,000 shares stock Virginia and Gold Hill Water Company; 937 shares stock Golden City Chemical Works; solvent credits, money; 39,570 shares of California Mining Company stock; 61,410 shares Consolidated Virginia Mining Company; 16,386 shares Opliir Mining Company; 15,718 shares Yellow Jacket Mining Company; Union Consolidated and Sierra Nevada Mining Company stock,--assessed at the valuation of $10,680,000.”
This is the logical, legal result of the decision of the supreme court in Burke v. Badlam, if I correctly apprehend its import, and the complaint fails- to show a cause of action on that ground. An absolutely vbid tax, certainly, can constitute no cause of action. I am also inclined to think the tax void as an assessment in gross—a lumping assessment—upon the aggregate of a great many thousand shares of stock in numerous corporations, organized for a great variety of purposes, having no relation whatever to each other, and no common element of value, such as banking, mining, milling, lumbering, commercial, gas manufacturing, powder making, chemical works, etc., moneys, solvent credits, etc. One would suppose that a party would be entitled to have each class of property, having different values, assessed by itself, so that he can determine whether it is properly assessed or not. An assessment in gross upon a great variety of classes of property, having no relation to each other, and no common element of value, like those described in this assessment, affords no means of knowing whether any particular part or class of it has been properly assessed or not. It gives him no means of correcting an improper assessment before the board of equalization, or otherwise protecting himself from extortion. The authorities on this point have