31 A.2d 108 | Pa. | 1943
This appeal involves a controversy arising under an ordinance of the City of Philadelphia known as the City Sales Tax Ordinance adopted February 8, 1938.
The Sales Tax Ordinance (held valid by this Court inBlauner's, Inc. v. Philadelphia,
Here, as in the court below, non-liability for payment of the tax on the $89,082.06 unreported sales is urged on two grounds: (1) that the City, having recovered an award in a prior suit involving the return on sales for the period ending March 31, 1938 (affirmed on appeal to the Superior Court — Phila. v.Heinel Motors, Inc.,
(1) The so-called rule against splitting causes of action does not mean that distinct causes of action, each of which would authorize independent relief, must be presented in a single suit. "One person may, at the same time, hold several distinct causes of action against another, and may maintain an action on any of such causes, without prejudicing his right to proceed upon any of the others. The fact that they might all be joined in one action, or that they arise out of the same transaction, is immaterial": 2 Freeman on Judgments (5th ed.), section 588. See also Eidam v. B. L. Assn.,
(2) This same contention — that unreported sales represented payments under unmatured instalment contracts — was argued before the Superior Court in the prior litigation and disposed of as follows (pp. 501-02): "Appellant now urges that because the ordinance provides that 'the tax upon sales on the instalment plan shall be paid on the amount of each instalment and upon the date when such instalment is due' it follows that the decree could only go to the extent of compelling [it] to account for the amount of the instalments paid to [it] during the month of March on sales made in that month . . . Under the uncontradicted testimony . . . [appellant's] records were not kept on the instalment basis . . . If the appellant had confined [itself] to the collection of a tax on each instalment, [it] would be justified in resisting the claim of the City of Philadelphia for any amount in excess of 2% of the instalments collected each month, but where, as here, collection is made on the entire sales price, [it] cannot defeat the City's claim that [it] pay over the tax so collected." Admittedly the company's method of doing business, as shown by its books and records, was precisely the same during the three quarterly periods as in the period ending March 31, 1938, and hence the decision of the Superior *532 Court concludes the matter not only with regard to the latter period but for the subsequent periods now in question as well. This is nonetheless so because, as already stated, the causes of action are separate and distinct. As held by the Supreme Court of the United States in New Orleans v. Citizens' Bank, supra (pp. 396, 398): ". . . the mere fact that the demand in this case is for a tax for one year, and the demands in the adjudged cases were for taxes for other years, does not prevent the operation of the thing adjudged, if in the prior cases the question of exemption was necessarily presented and determined upon identically the same facts upon which the right of exemption is now claimed." See also 2 Freeman on Judgments (5th ed.), section 851.
Decree affirmed at appellant's cost.