ROGERS
v.
STATE OF ARKANSAS; BARNHILL V. SAME

U.S. | 1913-02-24
Nos. 576, 577
227 U.S. 401 Supreme Court of the United States (1913) Caution
Also reported at: 57 L. Ed. 569 · 33 S. Ct. 298 · 1913 U.S. LEXIS 2312 · SCDB 1912-106
Cited by 13 cases

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Synopsis

The defendants were convicted under an Arkansas tax statute for peddling buggies without paying the required license tax, where they were employed as salesmen for an Iowa manufacturer that solicited orders in Arkansas but stored and delivered vehicles from Tennessee. The Supreme Court reversed the convictions, holding that the business operation was substantially identical to that addressed in the companion case Crenshaw v. Arkansas, which had already established that the statute could not be applied to this interstate sales method.

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Opinion of the Court
Me. Justice Day

Mr. Justice Day delivered the opinion of the court.

The plaintiffs in error were convicted of peddling buggies in Greene County, Arkansas, without having paid the license' or privilege tax required by an act of the Arkansas legislature approved April 1, 1909 (Act 97, Acts of 1909, p, 292), regulating the sale of lightning rods, steel stove ranges, clocks, pumps and vehicles in the counties, of that State. (The provisions of such statute are set out in the case just decided, Crenshaw v. Arkansas.) The Supreme. Court of Arkansas affirmed the judgments upon the authority of Crenshaw v. State, 95 Arkansas, 464 (144 S.

W. Rep. 211), and the cases are here upon writ of error. The cases were, submitted upon dn agreed statement of facts, the gist of which is that the Spaulding Manufacturing Company, a partnership, with its principal place of business and factory-at Grinnell, Iowa, manufactures buggies and automobiles which are sold directly to the consumers throughout the United States. It has no permanent place of business ,in Arkansas, but sends a force of salesmen or canvassers, in charge of a superintendent, into Greene and other counties of Arkansas, who travel about exhibiting their sample buggies and taking orders for future delivery. Where orders are taken, a memorandum is signed by the purchaser, stipulating for the delivery of the vehicle within a certain time, and a note for the purchase price is secured. The orders are turned over to the superintendent, who, if he finds the financial responsibility .of the customers satisfactory, transmits the orders to an agent of the company at Memphis, Tennessee, where vehicles of the company of various grades and kinds are stored. Vehicles to fill the orders are selected, tagged with the name of the purchaser, and shipped in car-load lots to a place near where they are to be delivered, consigned to the company. An employé of the company, usually a different person from the'salesman, called a deliveryman, receives the vehicles and delivers them to the respective purchasers, no storage house being maintained at that point. It was further agreed that no vehicles, save the samples, which are never sold, are brought into or stored n Arkansas, except for the purpose of delivery upon orders previously taken; and no vehicles are sold other than upon orders taken before they are brought into the State. The plaintiffs in error were salesmen and transacted the business above described.

The manner in which the business of soliciting orders for and delivering vehicles was done by the Spaulding Manufacturing Company, differs in no practical or material particular from that employed by the Wrought Iron Range Company in the case just decided (Crenshaw v. Arkansas).

In fact, the only difference is that the ranges were shipped to the company, bearing no marks to identify the purchasers, and were delivered to the purchasers by the deliverymen without distinction, while the vehicles were tagged at Memphis and upon arrival in Arkansas were delivered by the deliverymen to the purchasers whose names appeared upon the tags attached to the vehicles. This is merely a matter of detail in the manner in which the business is conducted and does not affect its character. The decision in Crenshaw v. Arkansas, ante, p. 389, has dealt with precisely the same statute and substantially the same facts and controls the present cases.

The judgments of the Supreme Court of Arkansas must therefore be reversed and the cases remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Reversed.

Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus

Citator

Cited By

  • Wilk v. City of Bartow, 86 Fla. 186 (Fla. 1923)
    …a question depending upon broader consideration than the existence of a technically binding contract, or the time and place where the title passed.” In Crenshaw v. Arkansas, 227 U. S. 389, the merchandise sold was ranges, and in Rogers v. Arkansas, 227 U. S. 401, the property sold was buggies. The charge in each case was that the business was prosecuted without first having paid the license tax imposed by the local authorities upon such business. The transaction in each instance was similar to the dealings…
  • Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622 (U.S. 1951)
    …do Springs, 40 F. Supp. 15, and Zimmerman v. London (Ohio), 38 F. Supp. 582. He cited: Real Silk Hosiery Mills v. Portland, 268 U. S. 325; Di Santo v. Pennsylvania, 273 U. S. 34; International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91; Rogers v. Arkansas, 227 U. S. 401; Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489; Baldwin v. Seelig, Inc., 294 U. S. 511; Stewart v. Michigan, 232 U. S. 665. An ordinance forbidding the sale of cigarettes without a license was upheld. “Regulations respecting the pursuit of a la…
    1 / 3
  • McGoldrick v. Berwind-White Coal Mining Co., 309 U.S. 33 (U.S. 1940)
    …. 502; Asher v. Texas, 128 U. S. 129; Stoutenburgh v. Hennick, 129 U. S. 141; Brennan v. Titusville, 153 U. S. 289; Stockard v. Morgan, 185 U. S. 27; Caldwell v. North Carolina, 187 U. S. 622; Crenshaw v. Arkansas, 227 U. S. 389; Rogers v. Arkansas, 227 U. S. 401; Stewart v. Michigan, 232 U. S. 665; Davis v. Virginia, 236 U. S. 697; Real Silk Hosiery Mills v. Portland, 268 U. S. 325. Read in their proper historical setting these cases may be said to support the view that this kind of a tax is likely to be us…

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