holding that it was “not unconscionable” for the county to retain funds paid to it when the payment was made voluntarily “because it was without objection paid under a mistake of law ... and there was no mistake of fact in paying it, and no deceit, fraud, or compulsion used in collecting it, or in causing it to be paid”
How later courts described this case
- holding that it was “not unconscionable” for the county to retain funds paid to it when the payment was made voluntarily “because it was without objection paid under a mistake of law ... and there was no mistake of fact in paying it, and no deceit, fraud, or compulsion used in collecting it, or in causing it to be paid”
- no refund of tax claimed to be illegally assessed, where all parties regarded it as valid when paid, and recovery could disrupt county fiscal affairs
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Separate opinion of Associate Justice Gould.
I concur in the judgment rendered, and in the positions assumed in the opinion, except the construction that the proviso does not apply to merchants. In addition, also, to the positions taken in the opinion, I hold that though the proviso applied both to merchants and to those who sold by sample, the law is divisible,_ so that the proviso may, if necessary, be rejected, and the tax, without the exemption, remain in force.