A state statute which levies a tax upon the gross receipts of
railroads for the carriage of freights and passengers into, out of,
or through the state, is a tax upon commerce among the states, and
therefore void.
While a state may tax the money actually within the state after
it has passed beyond the stage of compensation for carrying persons
or property, as it may tax other money or property within its
limits, a tax upon receipts for this class of carriage specifically
is a tax upon the commerce out of which it arises, and, if that be
interstate commerce, it is void under the Constitution.
The states cannot be permitted, under the guise of a tax upon
business transacted within their borders, to impose a burden upon
commerce among the states when the business so taxed is itself
interstate commerce.
This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State of
Michigan to bring here for review a decree sustaining a demurrer to
the complainant's bill in chancery, and dismissing the bill. The
complainant brought suit as president of the Merchants' Dispatch
Transportation Company, averring that said company is a joint stock
association organized and existing under the laws of the State of
New York, and by the
Page 121 U. S. 231
laws of that state authorized to sue in the name of its
president. The bill, so far as it presents the questions on which
this Court can have jurisdiction, charges as follows:
"
Second. That during the year ending with the 31st day
of December. A.D. 1883, the said transportation company was engaged
in the business of soliciting and contracting for the
transportation of freight required to be carried over connecting
lines of railroad in order to reach its destination, and for the
prosecution of its said business it had agencies located generally
throughout the United States and the Dominion of Canada. The said
transportation company issued through bills of lading for such
freight, and caused the same to be carried by the appropriate
railroad companies, and, as compensation for its service in the
premises, the said transportation company was paid by the said
railroad companies a definite proportion of the through rate
charged and collected by said companies for the carriage of said
freights."
"
Third. That during the said year, the said
transportation company was possessed of certain freight cars which
were used and run by the railroad companies in whose possession
they chanced from time to time to be for the transportation upon
their own and connecting lines of railroad of through freight,
principally between the City of New York, in the State of New York,
and Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, and Chicago, in the
State of Illinois, and other points and commercial centers in the
west, northwest, and southwest, without the said State of Michigan;
that said cars were not used for the carriage of freight between
points situate within the said State of Michigan, but wholly for
the transportation of freight, either passing through the state or
originating at points without said state and destined to points
within, or originating at points within said state and destined to
points without; that the said several railroad companies thus
making use of said cars during the said year paid to the said
transportation company as compensation therefor a definite sum per
mile for the distance traveled by the said cars over their
respective lines."
"
Fourth. That the said transportation company,
during
Page 121 U. S. 232
the said year, was not running or interested in any special
fast, through, or other stock, coal, or refrigerator car freight
line, or doing business in or running cars over any of the
railroads of said State of Michigan otherwise than as in the
preceding paragraphs stated."
"
Fifth. That prior to the first day of April, A.D.
1884, the Commissioner of Railroads of the State of Michigan
transmitted to the said transportation company certain blank forms
of a report to be made to him pursuant to the provisions of an Act
of the legislature of the State of Michigan approved June 5, 1883,
entitled"
"An act to provide for the taxation of persons, co-partnerships,
associations, car-loaning companies, corporations, and fast freight
lines engaged in the business of running cars over any of the
railroads of this state, and not being exclusively the property of
any railroad company paying taxes on their gross receipts,"
"with the requirement that the said transportation company
should make up and return said report to the office of said
commissioner on or before the first day of April, 1884, under the
penalties of said act; that on or about said first day of April, in
compliance with said demand, but protesting that the same was
without authority of law and that said act was invalid -- or, if
valid, was not applicable to the said transportation company -- the
said transportation company made and filed with said commissioner a
report, duly verified, setting forth that the gross amount of the
receipts of the said transportation company for the mileage of said
cars during said year 1883, while in use in the transportation of
freight between points without said state and passing through said
state in transit, estimated and prorated according to the mileage
of said cars within said State of Michigan while so in use, was the
sum of $95,714.50, and while in the use of transportation of
freight from points without to points within said State of Michigan
and from points within to points without said state, estimated and
prorated according to the mileage of said cars within the State of
Michigan while so in use, was the sum of $28,890.01, making in the
aggregate the sum of $124,604.51; that during said year it received
no moneys whatever on business done solely
Page 121 U. S. 233
within the said State of Michigan, and no moneys which were or
could be regarded as earned during said year within the limits of
said State of Michigan other than as hereinbefore and in said
report set forth."
"
Sixth. That by the terms of said act, it is the duty
of said Commissioner of Railroads to make and file with the Auditor
General of said State of Michigan, prior to the first day of June
each year, a computation based upon the report of each person,
association, co-partnership, or corporation taxable thereunder of
the amount of tax to become due from them respectively, and each
such person, association, co-partnership, or corporation is
required, on or before the first day of July in such year, to pay
to the Treasurer of said State of Michigan, upon the statement of
the Auditor General thereof, two and one-half percent upon its
gross receipts as computed by the said Commissioner of Railroads,
and derived from loaning, renting, or hiring of cars to any
railroad or other corporation, association, co-partnership, or
party. It was also provided in said act that for the said taxes,
and interest thereon, and the penalty imposed for delay in the
payment thereof, the said state should have a lien upon all the
property of the person, association, co-partnership, or corporation
so taxed, and, in default of the payment of said tax by and within
the time so prescribed, the Auditor General of said state was
authorized to issue his warrant to the sheriff of any county in
said state, commanding him to levy the same, together with ten
percent for his fees, by distress and sale of any of the property
of the corporation or party neglecting or refusing to pay tax
wherever the same may be found within the county or state."
"
Seventh. That the said Commissioner of Railroads has
computed and determined that the amount of the gross receipts of
the said transportation company under the said act is the said sum
of $28,890.01, and that there is due from said transportation
company to the State of Michigan, as a tax thereon, the sum of
$722.25, and has transmitted said computation to the said Auditor
General, and your orator shows that unless said tax is paid by the
said transportation company on or before
Page 121 U. S. 234
the first day of July, 1884, it will become the duty of the said
Auditor General under the said act, and the said Auditor General
threatens that he will proceed, to enforce payment of the said tax
against said transportation company by the seizure and sale of the
property of said transportation company under the provisions of
said act."
"
Eighth. That your orator is advised, and so charges,
that the said act as to the said gross receipts of the said
transportation company, or of any of its receipts or earnings from
the use of its cars, within the State of Michigan, and the
transaction of its business in the manner aforesaid, is in
violation of the Constitution of the United States and void, and
that said act is inapplicable to the said transportation company
and inoperative for further reasons appearing upon its face, and
that said transportation company is not amenable thereto."
"
Ninth. That the chief office of the said
transportation company for the transaction of corporate business
was during said year and is in the City of New York, in the State
of New York, and that all the moneys earned by it, as set forth in
the second and third paragraphs hereof, were paid to it at its said
office; that said company, during said year, had no funds or
property whatsoever within the State of Michigan except cars in
transit and office furniture in the possession of agents, and that
during said year the said transportation company was subject to
taxation, and was taxed, on account of its property and earnings,
within and under the laws of the State of New York."
The bill then prays for a subpoena against William C. Stevens,
Auditor General of the State of Michigan, and for an injunction to
prevent him from proceeding in the collection of said taxes. To
this bill the defendant Stevens demurred, and the Circuit Court for
the County of Washtenaw, in which this suit was brought, overruled
that demurrer. From this decree the defendant appealed to the
supreme court of the state, where the judgment of the lower court
was reversed, the demurrer sustained, and the bill dismissed. To
reverse that decree this writ of error was sued out.
Page 121 U. S. 237
MR. JUSTICE MILLER, after stating the case as above reported,
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The contention of the plaintiff in error is that the statute of
Michigan, the material parts of which are recited in the bill, is
void as a regulation of commerce among the states, which, by the
Constitution of the United States, is confided exclusively to
Congress. Article I, Section 8, cl. 3. It will be observed that the
bill shows that the tax finally assessed by the Auditor of State
against the transportation company was for the $28,890.01 of the
gross receipts which the company had returned to the commissioner
as money received for the transportation of freight from points
without to points within the State of Michigan, and from points
within to points without that state, and that no tax was assessed
on the $95,714.50 received for transportation passing entirely
through the state to and from other states.
Page 121 U. S. 238
There is nothing in the opinion of the supreme court of the
state, which is found in the transcript of the record, to explain
this discrimination. There is nothing in the statute of the state
on which this tax rests which makes such a distinction, nor is
there anything in the commissioner's requirement for a report which
suggests it. It must have been, therefore, upon some idea of the
authorities of the state that the one was interstate commerce and
the other was not, which we are at a loss to comprehend. Freight
carried from a point without the state to some point within the
State of Michigan as the end of its voyage, and freight carried
from some point within that state to other states, is as much
commerce among the states as that which passes entirely through the
state from its point of original shipment to its destination. This
is clearly stated and decided in the case of
Reading Railroad
Co. v. Pennsylvania, commonly called the
Case of
the State Freight Tax, 15 Wall. 232, in which it is
held that a tax upon freight taken up within the state and carried
out of it, or taken up without the state and brought within it, is
a burden on interstate commerce, and therefore a violation of the
constitutional provision that Congress shall have power to regulate
commerce with foreign nations and among the several states. And in
Wabash Railway Co. v. Illinois, 118 U.
S. 557, it is held that a statute attempting to regulate
the rates of compensation for transportation of freight from New
York to Peoria, in the State of Illinois, or from Peoria to New
York, is a regulation of commerce among the states. The same
principle is established in
Crandall v.
Nevada, 6 Wall. 35.
The statute of the State of Michigan of 1883, under which this
tax is imposed, is entitled
"An act to provide for the taxation of persons, co-partnerships,
associations, car-loaning companies, corporations, and fast freight
lines engaged in the business of running cars over any of the
railroads of this state, and not being exclusively the property of
any railroad company paying taxes on their gross receipts."
Sections 1 and 2 require reports to be made to the Commissioner
of Railroads of the gross amount of their receipts for freight
earned within the limits of the state from all persons and
corporations running
Page 121 U. S. 239
railroad cars within the state. The commissioner is by § 4
required to make and file with the Auditor General, on the first
day of June of each year, a computation of the amount of tax which
would become due on the first day of July next succeeding from each
person, association, or corporation liable to pay such taxes. Each
one of these is by § 5 required to pay to the State Treasurer,
upon the statement of the Auditor General, an annual tax of two and
one-half percent upon its gross receipts as computed by the
Commissioner of Railroads.
It will thus be seen that the act imposed a tax upon all the
gross receipts of the Merchants' Dispatch Transportation Company, a
corporation under the laws of the State of New York and with its
principal place of business in that state, on account of goods
transported by it in the State of Michigan, and the bill states
that the company carried no freight the transportation of which was
between points exclusively within that state.
The subject of the attempts by the states to impose burdens upon
what has come to be known as interstate commerce or traffic, and
which is called in the Constitution of the United States "commerce
among the states," by statutes which endeavor to regulate the
exercise of that commerce, as to the mode by which it shall be
conducted, or by the imposition of taxes upon the articles of
commerce, or upon the transportation of those articles, has been
very much agitated of late years. It has received the attentive
consideration of this Court in many cases, and especially within
the last five years, and has occupied Congress for a time quite as
long. The recent act, approved February 4, 1887, entitled "An Act
to Regulate Commerce," passed after many years of effort in that
body, is evidence that Congress has at last undertaken a duty
imposed upon it by the Constitution of the United states in the
declaration that it shall have power "to regulate commerce with
foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian
tribes." Congress has freely exercised this power so far as relates
to commerce with foreign nations and with the Indian tribes, but in
regard to commerce among the several states it has, until this act,
refrained from the passage
Page 121 U. S. 240
of any very important regulation upon this subject except
perhaps the statutes regulating steamboats and their occupation
upon the navigable waters of the country.
With reference to the utterances of this Court, until within a
very short time past, as to what constitutes commerce among the
several states, and also as to what enactments by the state
legislatures are in violation of the constitutional provision on
that subject, it may be admitted that the Court has not always
employed the same language, and that all of the judges of the Court
who have written opinions for it may not have meant precisely the
same thing. Still we think the more recent opinions of the Court
have pretty clearly established principles upon that subject which
can be readily applied to most cases requiring the construction of
the constitutional provision, and that these recent decisions leave
no room to doubt that the statute of Michigan, as interpreted by
its supreme court in the present case, is forbidden as a regulation
of commerce among the states, the power to make which is withheld
from the state.
The whole question has been so fully considered in these
decisions, and the cases themselves so carefully reviewed, that it
would be doing little more than repeating the language of the
arguments used in them to go over the ground again. The cases of
the
State Freight Tax and
State Tax on Railway Gross
Receipts, which were considered together and decided at the
December term, 1872, and reported in
82 U. S. 15 Wall.
232-328, present the points in the case now before us perhaps as
clearly as any which have been before this Court. A statute of the
State of Pennsylvania imposed upon all the railroad corporations
doing business within that state, as well as steamboat companies
and others engaged in the carrying trade, a specific tax on each
2,000 pounds of freight carried, graduated according to the
articles transported. These were arranged into three classes, on
the first of which a tax of two cents per ton was laid, upon the
second three cents, and upon the third five cents. The Reading
Railroad Company, a party to the suit, in making its report under
this statute, divided its freight on which the tax was to be levied
into two classes,
Page 121 U. S. 241
namely freight transported between points within the state and
freight which either passed from within the state out of it or from
without the state into it. The Supreme Court of the State of
Pennsylvania decided that all the freight carried, without regard
to its destination, was liable to the tax imposed by the statute.
This Court, however, held that freight carried entirely through the
state from without, and the other class of freight brought into the
state from without or carried from within to points without, all
came under the description of "commerce among the states" within
the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and it held
also that freight transported from and to points exclusively within
the limits of the state was internal commerce, and not commerce
among the states. The taxing law of the state was therefore valid
as to the latter class of transportation, but with regard to the
others it was invalid, because it was interstate commerce, and the
state could lay no tax upon it. In that case, which was very
thoroughly argued and very fully considered, the case of
Crandall v.
Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, was cited as showing, in regard
to transportation, what was strictly internal commerce of a state
and what was interstate commerce. The Court said:
"It is not at all material that the tax is levied upon all
freight, as well that which is wholly internal as that embarked in
interstate trade. We are not at this moment inquiring further than
whether taxing goods carried because they
are carried, is
a regulation of carriage. The state may tax its internal commerce,
but, if an act to tax interstate or foreign commerce is
unconstitutional, it is not cured by including in its provisions
subjects within the domain of the state. Nor is a rule prescribed
for carriage of goods through, out of, or into a state any the less
a regulation of transportation because the same rule may be applied
to carriage which is wholly internal. Doubtless a state may
regulate its internal commerce as it pleases. If a state chooses to
exact conditions for allowing the passage or carriage of persons or
freight through it into another state, the nature of the exaction
is not changed by adding to it similar conditions for allowing
transportation wholly within the state."
Pp.
82 U. S.
276-277.
Page 121 U. S. 242
In the case of
Erie Railway
Company (a corporation of the State of New York)
v. Pennsylvania, 15 Wall. 282, decided at the same time,
it appeared that the road of that company was constructed for a
short distance through a part of the State of Pennsylvania, and
that a similar tax was levied upon it for freight carried over its
road. This was held to be invalid for the reasons given in the case
of the Reading Road.
In the other case of
State Tax on
Railway Gross Receipts, 15 Wall. 283, which was also a
suit between the Reading Railway Company and the State of
Pennsylvania, an act of the legislature of that state was relied on
which declared that,
"In addition to the taxes now provided by law, every railroad,
canal, and transportation company incorporated under the laws of
this commonwealth, and not liable to the tax upon income under
existing laws, shall pay to the commonwealth a tax of three-fourths
of one percent upon the gross receipts of said company, and the
said tax shall be paid semiannually upon the first days of July and
January, commencing on the first day of July 1866."
This tax was held to be valid. The grounds upon which it was
distinguished from the one in the preceding case upon freight were
that, the corporation being a creation of the Legislature of
Pennsylvania, and holding and enjoying all its franchises under the
authority of that state, this was a tax upon the franchises which
it derived from the state, and was for that reason within the power
of the state, and that, in determining the mode in which the state
could tax the franchises which it had conferred, it was not limited
to a fixed sum upon the value of them, but it could be graduated by
and proportioned to either the value of the privileges granted, or
the extent or results of their exercise. "Very manifestly," said
the Court, "this is a tax upon the railroad company, measured in
amount by the extent of its business, or the degree to which its
franchise is exercised." Another reason given for the distinction
is that
"the tax is not levied, and, indeed, such a tax cannot be, until
the expiration of each half year, and until the money received for
freights, and from other sources of income, has actually come into
the company's hands.
Page 121 U. S. 243
Then it has lost its distinctive character as freight earned, by
having become incorporated into the general mass of the company's
property. While it must be conceded that a tax upon interstate
transportation is invalid, there seems to be no stronger reason for
denying the power of a state to tax the fruits of such
transportation, after they have become intermingled with the
general property of the carrier, than there is for denying her
power to tax goods which have been imported, after their original
packages have been broken, and after they have been mixed with the
mass of personal property in the country."
Pp.
82 U. S.
294-295, citing
Brown v.
Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419.
The distinction between that case, which is mainly relied upon
by the Supreme Court of Michigan in support of its decree, and the
one which we now have before us is very obvious and is
two-fold:
First. The corporation which was the subject of that taxation
was a Pennsylvania corporation having the situs of its business
within the state which created it and endowed it with its
franchises. Upon these franchises, thus conferred by the state, it
was asserted the state had a right to levy a tax.
Second. This tax was levied upon money in the treasury of the
corporation, upon property within the limits of the state, which
had passed beyond the stage of compensation for freight and had
become, like any other property or money, liable to taxation by the
state. The case before us has neither of these qualities. The
corporation upon which this tax is levied is not a corporation of
the State of Michigan, and has never been organized or acknowledged
as a corporation of that state. The money which it received for
freight carried within the state probably never was within the
state, being paid to the company either at the beginning or the end
of its route, and certainly at the time the tax was levied it was
neither money nor property of the corporation within the State of
Michigan.
The proposition that the states can, by way of a tax upon
business transacted within their limits or upon the franchises of
corporations which they have chartered, regulate such business or
the affairs of such corporations has often been set up
Page 121 U. S. 244
as a defense to the allegation that the taxation was such an
interference with commerce as violated the constitutional provision
now under consideration. But where the business so taxed is
commerce itself, and is commerce among the states or with foreign
nations, the constitutional provision cannot thereby be evaded; nor
can the states, by granting franchises to corporations engaged in
the business of the transportation of persons or merchandise among
them, which is itself interstate commerce, acquire the right to
regulate that commerce, either by taxation or in any other way.
This is illustrated in the case of
Cook v.
Pennsylvania, 97 U. S. 566. The
State of Pennsylvania, by her laws, had laid a tax upon the amount
of sales of goods made by auctioneers, and had so modified and
amended this class of taxes that in the end it remained a
discriminating tax upon goods so sold imported from abroad. This
Court held that the tax which the auctioneer was required to pay
into the Treasury was a tax upon the goods sold, and, as this tax
was three-quarters of one percent upon foreign drugs, glass,
earthen ware, hides, marble work, and dye woods, that it was a tax
upon the goods so described for the privilege of selling them at
auction. The argument was made that this was a tax exclusively upon
the business of the auctioneer, which the state had a right to
levy. In that case, as in others, is was claimed that the privilege
of being an auctioneer, derived from the state by license, was
subject to such taxation as the state chose to impose; but the
proposition was overruled, and this Court held that the tax was a
regulation of commerce with foreign nations, and that the fact that
it was a tax upon the business of an auctioneer did not relieve it
from the objection arising from the constitutional provision.
The same question arose in the case of
Gloucester Ferry Co.
v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196.
That company was a corporation chartered by the State of New Jersey
to run a ferry carrying passengers and freight between the Town of
Gloucester in that state and the City of Philadelphia in the State
of Pennsylvania. It had no property within the State of
Pennsylvania, but it leased a landing place or wharf
Page 121 U. S. 245
in that city for its business. The Auditor General and Treasurer
of the State of Pennsylvania assessed a tax upon the capital stock
of this corporation under the laws of that state, which the company
refused to pay. Its validity was sustained by the state supreme
court, and the question was brought to this Court by a writ of
error. It was insisted that the tax was justified as a tax upon the
business of the corporation, which, it was claimed, was largely
transacted in the City of Philadelphia. The supreme court of the
state, in giving its decision, stated that the single question
presented for consideration was whether the company did business
within the State of Pennsylvania within the period for which the
taxes were imposed, and it held that it did, because it received
and landed passengers and freight at its wharf in the City of
Philadelphia. The argument was very much urged in this Court that
the licensing of ferries across navigable rivers, whether dividing
two states or otherwise, had always been within the control of the
states, and that this, being a mere tax upon the business of that
corporation carried on largely within the State of Pennsylvania,
was within the power of that state to regulate. But this Court
held, after an extensive review of the previous cases, that the
business of ferrying across a navigable stream between two states
was necessarily commerce among the states, and could not be taxed
as was attempted in that case.
In the case of
Pickard v. Pullman Southern Car Co.,
117 U. S. 34,
decided at the last term of the Court, it was shown that the
Legislature of Tennessee had imposed what it called a privilege
tax, under the constitution of that state, of $50 per annum upon
every sleeping car or coach run or used upon a railroad in that
state not owned by the railroad company so running or using it.
This, it will be perceived, is very much like the tax in the case
before us, except that it is a specific tax of $50 per annum upon
the car, instead of a tax upon the gross receipts arising from the
use of the car by its owner. In that case, after an exhaustive
review of the previous decisions in this class of cases by MR.
JUSTICE BLATCHFORD, who delivered the opinion of the Court, it
Page 121 U. S. 246
was held that, as these cars were not property located within
the state, it was a tax for the privilege of carrying passengers in
that class of cars through the state, which was interstate
commerce, and for that reason the tax could not be sustained.
Two cases have been decided at the present term of the Court in
which these questions have been considered, one of them at least
involving the subject now under consideration, namely, that of
Robbins v. Taxing District of Shelby Co., 120 U.
S. 489. A statute of that state declared that
"All drummers, and all persons not having a regular licensed
house of business in the taxing district, offering for sale or
selling goods, wares, or merchandise therein by sample, shall be
required to pay to the county trustee the sum of ten dollars per
week, or twenty-five dollars per month, for such privilege."
Robbins was prosecuted for a violation of this law, and on the
trial it appeared that he was a resident and a citizen of
Cincinnati, Ohio, who transacted the business of drumming in the
taxing district of Shelby County -- that is, soliciting trade by
the use of samples, for the firm by which he was employed, whose
place of business was in Cincinnati, and all the members of which
were residents and citizens of that city. It was argued in that
case, as in the others we have just considered, that the state had
a right to tax the business of selling by samples goods to be
afterwards delivered, and to impose a tax upon the persons called
drummers engaged in that business. It was further insisted that
since the license tax applied to persons residing within the state
as well as to those who might come from other states to engage in
that business, that it was not a tax discriminating against other
states or the products of other states, and was valid as a tax upon
that class of business done within the state. The whole subject is
reconsidered again in this case by MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY, who
delivered the opinion of the Court, in which it is held that the
business in which Robbins was engaged -- namely that of selling
goods by sample which were in the State of Ohio at the time and
were to be delivered in the City of Memphis, Tennessee --
constituted interstate commerce, and that so far as this tax was to
be imposed upon Robbins for doing that kind of
Page 121 U. S. 247
business, it was a tax upon interstate commerce, and therefore
not within the power of the state to enforce.
In the case of
Wabash Railway Co. v. Illinois,
118 U. S. 558,
the question presented related to a statutory regulation of that
state as to compensation for carrying freight. It was held by the
Supreme Court of Illinois to embrace all contracts for
transportation by railroad which came into or went out of the
state, as well as that which was wholly within its limits, and
although the controversy did not arise in regard to a tax upon
interstate commerce, yet the general question was fully considered
as to what was interstate commerce and what was commerce
exclusively within the state, and how far the former could be thus
regulated by a statute of a state. This Court held in that case
that no statute of a state in regard to the transportation of goods
over railroads within its borders, which was a part of a continuous
voyage to or from points outside of that state, and thus properly
interstate commerce, could regulate the compensation to be paid for
such transportation; that the carriage of passengers or freight
between different points is commerce, and, except where that is
wholly and exclusively within the limits of a state, it is not
subject in its material features to be regulated by the state
legislature.
In many other cases -- indeed, in the last three cases mentioned
-- the whole subject has been fully examined and considered with
all the authorities, and especially decisions of this Court
relating thereto. The result is so clearly against the statute of
Michigan as applied by its supreme court that we think the judgment
of that court cannot stand.
The decree of the Supreme Court of Michigan is reversed with
directions for further proceedings in accordance with this
opinion.
