# United States v. Davidson

> Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · December 20, 1943 · 139 F.2d 908

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9653751

## Case

- **Full name:** United States v. Davidson
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- **Decided:** December 20, 1943
- **Citations:** 139 F.2d 908; 1943 U.S. App. LEXIS 4068
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Sibley
- **Judges:** Sibley, Holmes, Waller
- **Cited by:** 20 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9653751

## Opinion text

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The owner of the elevator, a private corporation, is, by a series of irregular instruments, continued in possession as a lessee, using the elevator as before. The State is protecting the property and its commercial use as before, but is to be denied its usual recompense in taxes. It is a startling proposition to me that an agency of the United States, without Congressional authority to do that very thing, can acquire a series of commercial properties and continue them in commercial use by commercial users and extinguish State taxation of them by means of the governmental immunity of the United States.
Certain it is that taxation is the rule and immunity the exception, and that immunity must be positively and clearly shown. I do not think, for the reasons stated in the opinion, that an immunity is positively and clearly shown on Jan. 1, 1937, by the confused and uncertain evidence offered. For this additional reason, I think the judgment denying the immunity ought to be affirmed.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9653751. Public record. Not legal advice.