The judgment is said to be for taxes duly assessed against appellee, under Wisconsin statutes, upon income received from its business transacted within the State under state license. 270Ī corporation and citizen of Illinois, to recover on a judgment for $52,165.84 which appellant had duly recovered and entered against the appellee in the circuit court of Milwaukee county, Wisconsin, a court of general jurisdiction. The relevant facts, as stated by the certificate, are that the appellant, Milwaukee county, a county and citizen of Wisconsin, brought suit in the District Court for Northern Illinois against M. § 346, on certificate of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which presents a question of law concerning which the instructions of this Court are desired for the proper decision of the case. This case comes here under § 239 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. JUSTICE STONE delivered the opinion of the Court. Even if full faith and credit are not commanded, there is nothing in the Constitution and laws of the United States which requires a court of a State to deny relief upon a judgment recovered in another State because it is for taxes. 268 CERTIFICATE FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT SyllabusĤ. In answer to a question certified by the court below, on an appeal from a judgment of the District Court dismissing an action in Illinois based on a judgment for taxes recovered by the plaintiff County in Wisconsin. 265, is disapproved insofar as it can be taken to suggest that full faith and credit are not required with respect to a judgment unless the original cause of action would have been entitled to like credit. IV, § 1, and the Act of Congress passed thereunder, to entertain suits to recover taxes levied under the statutes of another State, they cannot deny full faith and credit to judgments recovered in the other State for such taxes. Assuming that the courts of one State, and federal court therein, are not required by the Constitution, Art. Where suits to enforce the laws of one State are entertained in the courts of another on the principle of comity, the federal District Courts sitting in that State may and should entertain them if to do so will not infringe federal law or policy. The objection that the courts in one State will not entertain a suit to recover taxes due to another or upon a judgment for such taxes goes not to the jurisdiction, but to the merits, and raises a question which District Courts are competent to decide. This was the rule established in the English courts before the Declaration of Independence. The obligation to pay taxes is not penal it is a statutory liability, quasi-contractual in nature, enforceable, if there be no exclusive statutory remedy, in the civil courts by the common law action of debt or indebitatus assumpsit. A suit by or on behalf of a State upon a judgment for taxes is a suit of a civil nature within the meaning of § 24, Jud.Code, defining the jurisdiction of the District Courts.
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