127 Fla. 86 | Fla. | 1937
Lead Opinion
This was a bill for injunction to restrain the City of Haines City from levying and collecting taxes on forty acres of land within the latter's corporate limits on the authority of the doctrine this Court affirmed in the case of State, ex rel.
Attorney General, versus City of Avon Park,
The record in this case discloses that the particular lands involved in this case were included in the municipal limits in 1914, and that no contest over the validity of their original inclusion in the city, because of a constitutional lack of municipal benefits, has heretofore been brought. In the case of State, ex rel. Landis, Attorney General, v. Haines City,
The same principle of law as that decided in the quo warranto case is even more applicable to the other forty acres of appellant's land described in this suit and shown to have been within the appellee municipality's jurisdiction since 1914, as appears by the record in this case. So the decree of the Circuit Court denying injunctive relief of a character that has heretofore been held not to be obtainable by quo warranto, because of the owner's laches, should be affirmed on the authority of what was stated to be the law of the quo warranto cases, State, ex rel. Landis, Atty. Gen., v. Haines City, supra.
Constitutional writ denied and decree appealed from affirmed.
ELLIS, C.J., and WHITFIELD, TERRELL and BUFORD, J.J., concur.
BROWN, J., concurs specially.
Concurrence Opinion
In addition to the reasons stated in the foregoing opinion, the decree appealed from should also be affirmed because injunction was not, as I see it, the proper remedy. If the property was lawfully and constitutionally embraced within the City limits, the Constitution requires the municipality to tax it, along with all other non-exempt property, at an "equal and uniform rate" and upon a "just valuation." Art. IX, Sections 1 and 5, of Constitution. If not lawfully included within, or annexed to the city, the only method of ousting the municipal power thereover is by quo warranto. State v. City of Sarasota,