48 La. Ann. 1475 | La. | 1896
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This appeal is by the defendant from a judgment reducing the assessments of plaintiff’s property.
The plaintiff is a corporation organized to execute a contract with the city of New Orleans to remove and dispose of the garbage and
It seems that the plant of the company includes receiving vats, in which are placed dead animals, refuse from kitchens and other offal. By a heating process and the use of chemicals the moisture from this matter is vaporized, the gases disposed of, and grease or oil is extracted. The residuum in the vats, thus relieved of moisture and the grease or oil “ cooked,” as the witnesses express it, is adapted for fertilizing purposes and used as a fertilizer. This process of manufacture is detailed at length by the witnesses, and the results or products presented in the testimony are grease or oil extracted from the animal matter, and the residuum or tankage, rich, it is testified, in ammonia, is ground in the mill of the company, sacked and used as a fertilizer.
The defendant urges that the processes used by plaintiff are “ reduction and conversion ” of the garbage, and hence the plaintiff is not a manufacturer. But we must accept from the record, that the results produced by plaintiff are effected by the machinery, agencies and appliances of a manufacturing establishment, and the garbage that goes into the vats and extractors is changed into oil or grease and fertilizers, that is to say, garbage, in vats subjected to the action of heat, steam and naphtha, is changed into oils and fertilizers. It seems to us that whether “ conversion or reduction,” the processes and results are those incident to manufacturing, in the accustomed sense of the word in the contemplation it is to be supposed of the lawgiver in granting the exemption from taxation of property employed in the manufacture of the various products specified, including chemicals and fertilizers. The defendant further contends, that the main business of plaintiff is to remove garbage from the city; that the use it makes of the garbage is the mere incident of that business,
We are asked, in any event, to exempt the property only to the extent it is used for the- manufacture of exempted products, and to apply the rule of distribution in the Washburne case. (Washburne vs. City of New Orleans et als., 43 An. 226.) There is no basis supplied by the record on which we could make this apportionment. It is in evidence that a portion of the property — i. e., wagons, mules, the crematory to burn that part of the garbage not susceptible of use
It is therefore ordered, adjudged and decreed that the judgment of the lower court be affirmed with costs.