City of Los Angeles v. Western Union Oil Co.

This action was instituted to recover from the defendant $16,654.24 taxes with ten per cent penalty added thereto" for nonpayment thereof and interest. This represented the tax upon defendant’s “franchise to be a corporation” assessed for $1,423,555. The value of this franchise was arrived at by multiplying the amount which the shares of defendant corporation were selling for upon the stock ex change in the city of Los Angeles on the first Monday in March, 1907 ($303 per share), by the total number of shares of the capital stock of the corporation and deducting therefrom the assessed value of all the other property of the corporation,—namely, its leasehold interest in lands in Santa Barbara County, together with derricks, oil boring machinery, tanks, reservoirs, and oil assessed at $82,580 and money in hand amounting to $8865. The sum so reached as the value of the franchise of the corporation was by the assessor divided in two and fifty per cent of it, the sum above given, fixed as the assessment value of the franchise. Upon these facts the trial court gave judgment for plaintiff and from that judgment defendant appeals.

The trial court found as follows: “In the opinion of the…