106 Wis. 25 | Wis. | 1900
This case comes up on an appeal from an order overruling a demurrer to the complaint. The basis of the plaintiff’s alleged cause of action may be stated as follows : The plaintiff is a duly organized town. The defendant is a village situated within the limits of said town, incorporated under ch. 391, Laws of 1881, in 1892. After its organization, it elected officers, exercised the power and authority of a village corporation as prescribed by law, and collected its taxes independently of the town from that time until the present. About the fourth Monday in August, 189 6, the town clerk made a detailed statement of the several items prescribed by secs. 1050, 1066, R. S. 1878, and duly certified the same to the county clerk, but such statement covered none of the real or personal property of the village. About the same time the village clerk made a similar certification as to the property of the village. These statements were laid before the county board, and the usual assessment of relative values of property in the county was made by the board. About that time it began to be rumored that certain villages of the state incorporated under ch. 40 of the statutes were illegal, so the board made an assessment of the town under the name of “ that part of the town of Mil-wczuhee not included in the village of Whitefish Bay,” and of the village under the name of “ that part of the town of Milwaukee included in the village of Whitefish Bay.” The board thereupon apportioned the state and county taxes to be raised, and the portion due on a loan by the state to the defendant, under the name stated, making a total of $12,830.96. After-wards an application was made, and commissioners were duly appointed, under the statute, to adjust the relative valuations so. made by the board, and it was determined by the commissioners that such valuations should be so changed that the total tax to be charged against the defendant was increased to $3,246.95. The county clerk refused to deliver any statement of the taxes so certified to the clerk of de
Whatever may be the moral aspect of the case we have no concern therewith. It must be determined upon cold and unsympathetic principles of law. A moral obligation will not, of itself, create a legal obligation in an action at law. There must be some legal duty underlying the moral burden to warrant the intervention of the courts. So far as we are able to ascertain, there is no reason stated in the complaint why the county clerk failed or refused to make the proper certification of taxes to the village clerk in 1896. It was certainly his duty to do so under the law, and his attempt to certify the same to the town was a void act, for which the defendant is not responsible. The defendant was a going corporation, acting under the forms of law,
In the brief of the counsel for plaintiff we find this statement: “The action is not predicated upon any such wrong
By the Court.— The order of the superior court of Milwaukee county is reversed, and the cause is remanded with directions to enter an order sustaining the demurrer, and for further proceedings according to law.