United Hospitals Service Ass'n v. Fulton County

Ducicworth, Chief Justice.

“All institutions of purely public charity” may be exempt by law from taxation. Upon the meaning of the above italicized words, contained in art. 7, sec. 1, par. 4 (Code § 2-5404) of the Constitution, rests the fate of the present case. There is an array of decisions by this court in which this provision of the Constitution was applied to given cases and judgments rendered which were made to depend upon whether the facts brought the cases under the Constitution. We will attempt to analyze and discuss some of those decisions later.

But we wish to insure that our own…