some other kinds were valued by one set of officials, and property in general by another, without provision for equalization as between the two classes. The court, by Circuit Judge Taft, said (p. 364): "The sole and manifest purpose of the constitution was to secure uniformity and equality of burden upon all the property in the State. As a means of doing so (conceding that defendant's construction is the correct one), it provided that the assessment should be according to its true value. It emphasized the object of the section by expressly providing that no species of property should be taxed higher than any other species. We have before us a case in which the complaining taxpayer, and other taxpayers owning the same species of property, are taxed at a higher rate than the owners of other species of property. This does not come about by legislative discrimination, but by the intentional and systematic disregard of the law by those charged with the duty of assessing all other species of property than that owned by complainant and its fellows of the same class. [p. 365] The question pre

sented is, then, whether, when the sole object of an article of the constitution is being flagrantly defeated, to the gross pecuniary injury of a class of litigants, and one of them appeals to a court of equity for relief, it must be withheld because the only mode of granting it will involve an apparent departure from the method marked out by the constitution and the law for attaining its sole object. We say 'apparent' departure from the constitutional method, because that instrument contemplated a system in which all property should be assessed at its real value. The court is placed in a dilemma, from which it can only escape by taking that path which, while it involves a nominal departure from the letter of the law, does injury to no one, and secures that uniformity of tax burden which was the sole end of the constitution. To hold otherwise is to make the restrictions of the constitu

tion instruments for defeating the very purpose they were intended to subserve. It is to stick in the bark, and to be blind to the substance of things. It is to sacrifice justice to its incident."

After pointing out the similarity of the case to Cummings v. National Bank, supra, and declaring (p. 372): "An intentional undervaluation of a large class of property, when the law enjoins assessment at true value, is necessarily designed to operate unequally upon other classes of property to be assessed by other taxing tribunals, who, it may be presumed, will conform to the law," the court further said (p. 374): "The various boards whose united action is by law intended to effect a uniform assessment on all classes of property are to be regarded as one tribunal, and the whole assessment on all classes of property is to be regarded as one judgment. If any board which is an essential part of the taxing system intentionally, and therefore fraudulently, violates the law, by uniformly undervaluing certain classes of property, the assessment by other boards of other classes of property at the full value, though a literal compliance with the law, makes the whole assessment, considered as one judgment, a fraud upon the fully-assessed property. And this is true although the particular board assessing the complainant's property may have been wholly free from fault of fraud or intentional discrimination."

The justice of this view has been recognized by the state courts of last resort in many cases. Bureau County v. Chicago &c., R. R. Co., 44 Illinois, 229, 239; Cocheco Co. v. Strafford, 51 N. H. 455, 482; Manchester Mills v. Manchester, 58 N. H. 38; Randell v. City of Bridgeport, 63 Connecticut, 321, 324; C., B. & Q. R. R. Co. v. Comm'rs of Atchison Co., 54 Kansas, 781, 792; Ex parte Fort Smith &c. Bridge Co., 62 Arkansas, 461, 468; Burnham v. Barber, 70 Iowa, 87, 90; Barz v. Board of Equalization, 133 Iowa, 563, 565; Iowa Cent. Ry. Co. v. Board of Review (Iowa,

1916), 157 N. W. Rep. 731; Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co. v.. Luzerne Co., 225 Pa. St. 267, 271; People v. I. C. R. R. Co., 273 Illinois, 220, 244-250. There are declarations to the contrary (Central R. R. Co. v. State Board of Assessors, 48 N. J. L. 1, 7; Lowell v. County Commissioners, 152 Massachusetts, 372, 375), but they take little or no account of the rights of aggrieved taxpayers.

(6) The next question in order is whether the assessments have the effect of denying to plaintiffs the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is obvious, however, in view of the result reached upon the questions of state law, just discussed, that the disposition of the cases would not be affected by whatever result we might reach upon the federal question; for no other or greater relief is sought under the "equal protection" clause than plaintiffs are entitled to under the provisions of the constitution and laws of the State to which we have referred. Therefore, we find it unnecessary to express any opinion upon the question raised under the Fourteenth Amendment.

(7) It is objected that appellees had an adequate remedy at law, and Singer Sewing Machine Co. v. Benedict, 229 U. S. 481, is cited as a controlling authority. There the suit was brought to enjoin the collection of taxes levied by the City and County of Denver, in the State of Colorado, and because of the Act of Congress (Rev. Stats., § 723) and familiar decisions applying and enforcing it, since it appeared that a local statute required the board of county commissioners to refund taxes paid and thereafter found to be erroneous or illegal, "whether the same be owing to erroneous assessment, to improper or irregular levying of the tax, to clerical or other errors of omission," with a correlative right on the part of the taxpayer to enforce that duty by action at law, and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the State interpreted the statute so as to give an adequate remedy at law, this court affirmed a decree dismissing the bill.

The statute that is here invoked is § 162, Ky. Stats., which reads as follows: "§ 162. Taxes wrongfully collected refunded. When it shall appear to the Auditor that money has been paid into the treasury for taxes when no such taxes were in fact due, he shall issue his warrant on the treasury for such money so improperly paid, in behalf of the person who paid the same. "But,

by a line of recent decisions in the Kentucky Court of Appeals, the effect of this section has been confined to cases where the taxes paid either were wholly without warrant in law or were based upon a mistake as to the rate of taxation upon the amount assessed; and it has been held not to authorize the Auditor to correct erroneous assessments, since that official is not entrusted with authority to make assessments. German Security Bank v. Coulter, 112 Kentucky, 577; Louisville City National Bank v. Coulter, 112 Kentucky, 584, 587; Couty v. Bosworth, 160 Kentucky, 312; Bosworth v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 162 Kentucky, 344, 348; Louisville Gas & Electric Co. v. Bosworth, 169 Kentucky, 824, 829, 830.

But, were it otherwise, § 162 clearly applies to state taxes alone, while the bills of complaint herein have to do with both state and local taxes. A remedy at law cannot be considered adequate, so as to prevent equitable relief, unless it covers the entire case made by the bill in equity. Were we to require a dismissal of these bills as to the state taxes, retaining them as to the local taxes, we should multiply suits, instead of preventing a multiplicity of suits. It is a familiar maxim that "a court of equity ought to do justice completely, and not by halves;" and to this end, having properly acquired jurisdiction of a cause for any purpose, it should dispose of the entire controversy and its incidents, and not remit any part of it to a court of law. Camp v. Boyd, 229 U. S. 530, 551, 552; McGowan v. Parish, 237 U. S. 285, 296.

(8) It is contended that appellees, if aggrieved, had

another and more equitable remedy than a suit for injunction; that the law of the State provides a method by which, instead of lowering the assessments upon the property of appellees, they could by proper procedure compel the assessment of the property of other taxpayers to be increased so as to come within the constitutional requirement as to fair cash value, and hence that it was the duty of appellees to adopt that method. The reference is to §§ 4115-4120, Ky. Stats., which require the county board of supervisors to convene annually and make a careful examination of the assessor's books and each individual list thereof, empowering them to increase or decrease any list; "but the board shall not reduce or raise any assessment unless the evidence be clear and unmistakable that the valuation is not a fair cash value." By § 4123, they may hear complaints, summon and swear witnesses, and require them to testify. There is nothing in these provisions to indicate that parties in the situation of the present appellees, who have no different interest in the undervaluation by the county assessors than that which might be possessed by any other citizens of the State, are entitled to be heard to complain that the county assessments are too low. Nor is any case cited where such a complaint has been entertained. The remedy of reassessment appears to be a public, not a private remedy. We conclude that the decrees of the District Court must be, and they are

Affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES, MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS, and MR. JUSTICE CLARKE dissent.