Baumgartner v. Town of South Pittsburg
Baumgartner v. Town of South Pittsburg
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The bill was filed by complainant Baumgartner against the Town of South Pittsburg to secure a declaratory judgment as to the validity of Ordinance No. 172 of the town, this being a parking meter ordinance, and also to have an injunction against the town from enforcing said ordinance.
The Chancellor sustained the validity of this ordinance and this appeal resulted.
The principal contentions of the complainant are that the ordinance in question provides for a tax without any legislative authority and therefore void; also that said ordinance interferes with his right of ingress and egress to and from his property; and further, that the ordinance is discriminatory in that it made special provisions for taxicabs.
The Chancellor was of the opinion that our recent case of Porter v. City of Paris, 184 Tenn. 555, 556, 201
In answer to the second contention, Section 2 of the ordinance provides:
< < * * * no meter device shall he installed in front of any alley, garage entrance, filling station entrance or fire plug hut no space herein excepted shall extend more than seventy-five (75) feet on either side of the center of the entrance to any garage or filling station or the center of a fire plug.”
In compliance with this provision, no parking meters were installed in front of complainant’s garage building for the distance of 50 feet that it abutted on the street. A parking meter was installed in front of an abutting property owner just immediately north of complainant’s garage building, as a result of which, when a vehicle was parked in front of this meter at a forty-five degree angle, the rear end of it extended and encroached
As to the third objection, and. that is that it discriminated in favor of taxicabs, we quote the following from Bunn v. City of Atlanta, 67 Ga. App. 147, 19 S. E. (2d) 553, 554:
“As individuals have no right to transport passengers for hire in jitneys or busses on the streets of a city, and as a city can prohibit wholly or partially the conduct of such business in its streets, if the city sees fit to grant permission to individuals to conduct such business in its streets, it can prescribe such terms .and conditions as it may see fit, and individuals desiring to avail themselve of such permission must comply with such terms and conditions whether they are reasonable or unreasonable.”
It is to be further observed that there was no preference given to any particular taxicab company but a special place was reserved for all taxicabs. Chicago Park District v. Lattipee, 364 Ill. 182, 4 N. E. (2d) 86.
We have examined all of the assignments of error and find them without merit. It results that the decree of the Chancellor is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.