COMMERCIAL BANK
v.
ROCHESTER
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The Commercial Bank challenged a New York state tax assessment and appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming the Court of Appeals decided against the validity of a tax exemption for United States securities. The Court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction because the record did not clearly show that the state court had decided the federal constitutional question on which Supreme Court jurisdiction depended, as the decision could have rested instead on state procedural rules or pleading defects.
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Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.
As the demurrer does not point out any special defect in the petition, and as there is no assignment of errors in the record of the proceedings in any of the State courts, we find great difficulty in ascertaining the ground on which the Court of Appeals decided the case.
It has been so often held by this court, that the question on which the plaintiff in error relies to give it jurisdiction, must appear to have been decided by the State court, that it has become one of the settled principles on that subject.
It is said in this case that the court must have decided in favor of the validity of the tax, which it is conceded would have given this court jurisdiction. But this does not appear either affirmatively or by necessary intendment. For the case may have been decided on the form of the remedy which the practice in the State courts required the plaintiff to adopt, or on the technical insufficiency of the pleading.
In this uncertainty of the record as an indication, we might, without going further, dismiss the case on that ground. But we are referred to decisions in the State court which hold that the remedy for illegal or excessive assessment is by certiorari, issued in that proceeding, and,that as the modes of reviewing these assessments are in their nature judicial, the judgment is, until reversed or set aside, conclusive.
Undoubtedly the Court of Appeals of New York is the proper tribunal to decide this question, and as one of policy in the embarrassing matter of contesting tax levies, it is within the province of State law; and we are not authorized in this case to say that that court did not decide it correctly, or that it made any decision adverse to the exemption of the securities of the United States from State taxation.
In this respect the case is precisely in principle like that of The Insurance Co. v. The Treasurer.* It is accordingly
Dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
*
11 Wallace, 204.
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Adams v. Russell, 229 U.S. 353 (U.S. 1913)…ate question have that quality, and there be uncertainty as to the ground of decision, this court will not assume jurisdiction. Dibble v. Bellingham Bay Land Co., 163 U. S. 63, 69; Allen v. Arguimbau, 198 U. S. 149. In Commercial Bank v. Rochester, 15 Wall. 639, a suit was brought to recover a tax charged to have been illegally levied and collected upon the capital stock of the bank alleged to have been invested in United States bonds. The case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction. We said, by Mr. Justic…