69 Mo. App. 148 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1897
With the exception of the names of the parties and the amount involved this action is an. exact prototype of that of the City of Westport ex rel. Whiting v. Mastin, reported in 62 Mo. App. 647. The statement of that case will suffice for this. The defendant, in the present case, had judgment in the circuit court, and the relator has appealed. In the opinion in Mastin’s case it is said “that it is- practically conceded that the special tax must be levied by the board of aldermen, by ordinance, and the question made is, has it-been so levied within the meaning of the charter?” As we understand it the relator does not find fault with our reasoning and conclusion in so far as it is based on the foregoing concession. The relator does not make a like concession in the present case. His contention is that if the city engineer computed the cost of the work and apportioned the same among the several lots as required by the provisions of section 1592, Revised Statutes, that this was a levy within the meaning of that section, and that therefore the special tax in question does not depend for its validity upon whether or not the board of aldermen first passed an ordinance authorizing the levy and collection of the same against the owner or occupier of the lots to be charged therewith.
But there is another well settled rule of construction of equal pertinency which requires that we shall construe statutes so as to avoid, if possible, a conflict between the different parts thereof. In Morse v. Westport, 110 Mo. 508, it was said: “To hold that the legislature intended to restrict cities of the fourth class to that kind of paving known as macadamizing is not only to deny to the word building its ordinary meaning, but to go further and deny to it any meaning whatever, which would be the case if the construction contended for by plaintiffs were allowed to prevail. But to allow such a construction would be going counter to a very familiar rule of construction which accords, if possible, some effect to every word of a statute.” In City of St. Louis v. Lane, 110 Mo. 258, it was said: “The reading for which defendant contends would be perfectly apparent if we eliminated the words ‘in said 'block;’ * '* * but if those words ‘in said block, are to stand and be given some significance, we think they must be taken to simply be an intention to subject all
We can not uphold the plaintiffs’ construction that the action of the city engineer in computing and
We can not yield our assent to the assertion that there is no place in the whole proceeding contemplated by the section for the board of aldermen to make a levy of the special tax by ordinance. Nor do we think there is anything in the language of the section which gives countenance to the construction that an ordinance levying the special tax is not as indispensible under its provisions as it was under the provisions of those from which it was evolved.
We do not think the mere fact that the relator in this case does not make the same concession that was made by the relator in the Mastin cases renders inapplicable the principles by which we were controlled in the decision of the latter. If there was no ordinance in the present case levying the special tax and the action of the city engineer did not constitute a levy then there was no levy at all, and the two cases do not differ in their essential features. A rather careful consideration of the brief and argument of the learned counsel for the relator has not persuaded us that the conviction expressed by us in the Mastin case is erroneous and should not be adhered to.
The judgment of the circuit court will accordingly be affirmed.