Opinion
No. 3559.
June 7, 1928.
Appeal from District Court, Morris County; R. T. Wilkinson, Judge.
Action by Cass County against Morris County. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.
By the terms of article 6675, Revised Statutes of 1925, "every owner [quoting] of a motor vehicle, tractor, trailer, semi-trailer, or motorcycle used on the public highways of this state" was required to "annually file [quoting further] in the office of the county tax collector of the county in which he resides or in which the vehicle to be registered is being operated, an application for the registration of each such vehicle owned or controlled by him"; and by the terms of articles 6678 to 6681 of said statutes such owner was required to pay fees as therein specified to the tax collector of the county where the vehicle was registered. During 1926 and 1927 a number of people residing in Cass county, near the boundary line between that county and Morris county, and respectively owning motor vehicles which they used equally in both said counties, registered such vehicles in Morris county and paid the fees lawfully due therefor to the tax collector of that (Morris) county. This suit, by Cass county, as plaintiff, against Morris county, J. D. Heard, tax collector, and J. O. Johnson, county judge of said Morris county, as defendants, was to recover the fees (alleged to amount to the sum of $894.01) so paid to said J. D. Heard as tax collector of Morris county by owners of motor vehicles residing in Cass county. The trial was to the court without a jury. The appeal by Cass county is from a judgment denying it the relief it sought and in favor of Morris county for costs.
S. I. Cornett, of Linden, for appellant.
W. E. Newland, of Daingerfield, for appellee.
It is insisted that the statute referred to in the statement above required a motor vehicle to be registered and the fee therefor to be paid in the county where the owner thereof resided, unless the vehicle was operated in "carrying on (quoting from appellant's brief) a permanent business" in another county than the one in which the owner resided. So construing the statute, it not appearing that any of the vehicles in question were so operated in Morris county, it is insisted further that the vehicles should have been registered and the fees therefor paid in Cass county, and that the registration of same in Morris county was unauthorized. It is argued that Cass county therefore was entitled to recover as it sought to "under (quoting further from said brief) the general principle of law that `where one receives property belonging to another' he is under a legal as well as a moral obligation to turn it over to the rightful owner."
We will not undertake to determine the meaning of the statute; for if we concluded it should be construed as contended for, we would nevertheless feel bound to affirm the judgment. As we view the case, the principle invoked by Cass county is not applicable to it. Morris county never received any property belonging to Cass county. The property it received as fees for registering the motor vehicles was money belonging, not to Cass county, but to the owners of the vehicles. If the statute required the vehicles to be registered in Cass county and the registration thereof in Morris county was unauthorized, they were never lawfully registered. The right (if any existed) to recover the fees paid to the tax collector of Morris county for registering the vehicles was in the persons who paid such fees, and not in Cass county.
The judgment is affirmed.