Dauphin County Reports Volume 12 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In Re Continental Railroad Company. Corporations?Failure to carry out purpose of charter?Quo war r ant o. The commonwealth can not maintain quo warranto proceedings against a corporation because of its failure to pay the tax assessed and charged against it. A corporation that has made no effort to exercise any of the privileges granted by its charter for an unreasonable length of time, may be ousted of its franchises. Attorney General's Department. Opinion to R. K. Young, Auditor General. Hargest, Assistant Deputy Attorney General, July 28, 1909. The department is in receipt of your communication of July 15, 1909, stating that "a considerable amount of tax stands charged against The Continental Railway Company on the books of this department, and we seem unable to locate any officers of the company in Pennsylvania," and inquiring whether quo warranto proceedings could not be instituted against this company so as to clear your records. Upon further inquiry of your department, we learn that this is a Pennsylvania corporation, and that it has done nothing in the way of carrying out its charter rights, and has no property or work of any kind within the state. There is no authority to maintain quo warranto proceedings against this corporation because of its failure to pay the tax assessed and charged against it. It has been held that "where a charter of incorporation is granted by the state, there is an implied contract on the part of the grantees that they will perform the duties and exercise the privileges conferred by the charter," and that, when no time is stipulated, within which the grantees should perform their duties and exercise their charter privileges, and they have entirely failed for a reasonable time to exercise any of their charter rights, o...