Abbe v. Nash

• Decision Date: 15 October 1936
• Docket Number: No. 23085.,23085.
• Citation: 4 N.E.2d 101,364 Ill. 224
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. ABBE et al. v. NASH et al.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

364 Ill. 224

4 N.E.2d 101

PEOPLE ex rel. ABBE et al.

v.NASH et al.

No. 23085.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 10, 1936.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 15, 1936.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Cook County; Joseph Burke, Judge.

Mandamus suit by the People, on the relation of Mary M. Abbe and others, against Thomas D. Nash, and others. From a judgment awarding the writ, defendants appeal.

Reversed.

SHAW, J., HERRICK, C. J., and WILSON, J., dissenting.Thomas J. Courtney, State's Atty., of Chicago (Hayden N. Bell, Jacob Shamberg, Brendan Q. O'Brien, Robert S. Cushman, and Pomeroy Sinnock, Jr., all of Chicago, of counsel), for appellants.

Barnet Hodes, Corp. Counsel, William H. Sexton, I. T. Greenacre, Allan J. Carter, Thomas Mason, and Joseph F. Grossman, all of Chicago (Ferris E. Hurd and Alfred R. Bates, both of Chicago, of counsel), for appellees.

ORR, Justice.

[1] The sole inquiry here is whether collected penalties on forfeited real estate are to be paid to the county or distributed to the various taxing bodies. No question is raised as to interest or penalties prior to forfeiture, as it is conceded that funds from this source belong exclusively to the county. The essential facts are not in dispute. The cause originated in the circuit court of Cook county, where a writ of mandamus was awarded directing the county treasurer and his successors in office to distribute all funds collected as tax penalties subsequent to forfeiture to the various tax-levying bodies. Since the revenue is involved and the state is financially interested in the outcome, the cause properly comes here by direct appeal.

The determination of the question at issue requires our consideration of certain sections of the Revenue Acts of 1853 and 1872 and the amendments to the latter. Section 129 of the Revenue Act of 1872 (Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 120, § 117 and note) is substantially the same as section 8 of the Revenue Act of 1853 (Laws 1853, p. 101) except as to rates of interest. Both of these sections provided, in substance, that after forfeiture, the clerk, in making up the taxes due on property for any year, should add the amount of back taxes, interest, penalties, and fees, with one year's interest (at 6 per cent. in 1853 and 10 per cent. in 1872), to the taxes of the current year, and that the aggregate amount should be collected in like manner as a tax on other property for that year. Section 229 of the Revenue Act of 1872 (Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 120, § 214 and note) is likewise substantially the same as section 46 of the Revenue Act of 1853 (Laws 1853, p. 114). Both sections recite that the amount due on lands and lots previously forfeited to the state and remaining unpaid on the first day of November shall be added to the taxes of the current year and the amount thereof shall be reported against the county collector with the amount of taxes for that year, and the amount so charged shall be collected and paid over ‘in like manner as other taxes.’ Section 45 of the Revenue Act of 1853 required all interest added after forfeiture to be paid into the state treasury. It will therefore be seen that under section 46 of the Revenue Act of 1853, the predecessor of section 229 of the Revenue Act of 1872, there could not have been a ratable distribution of forfeiture interest between various taxing bodies because of the express provision to the contrary in section 45 above noted.

The Revenue Act of 1872, as originally adopted, contained no provision requiring the payment of forfeiture interest to the state, as had been required under the act of 1853. Whether this omission was intentional or otherwise is of no present consequence. The fact remains, however, that in 1879 an amendatory act supplying this omission was adopted by the Legislature. This was accomplished by an amendment to section 177, being the addition of the words ‘and all such due and unpaid taxes shall bear interest after the first day of May at the rate of one per cent. per month until paid or forfeited; parts or fractions of a month shall be reckoned as a month. And all such collections on account of interest shall be paid into the county treasury to be used for county purposes.’ Laws 1879, p. 253 (see Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 120, § 165 note). Section 129 of the act was also amended to increase the penalty following forfeiture to 25 per cent. for a year or any part thereof (Laws 1879, p. 253 [Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 120, § 117 and note]).

As the matter stands, section 129, which deals with real property forfeited to the state and provides for interest after forfeiture, is substantially the same as when originally adopted in 1872, except the rate of interest was changed from 10 to 25 per cent. in 1879 and reduced to 12 per cent. in 1933 (Laws 1933, p. 930 [Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 120, § 117]). On the other hand, section 177 as amended in 1879 contained at its end the following separate sentence: ‘And all such collections on account of interest shall be paid into the county treasury to be used for county purposes.’ There is nothing in this language in section 177, or in any part of section 129 preceding it, to indicate any legislative intent to apply different rules to interest added before and after forfeiture. Section 177 must be construed with section 129 and both sections treated as a part of the whole Revenue Act of 1872. Sections are purely artificial divisions of the statute. As was held in Warner v. King, 267 Ill. 82, at page 87, 107 N.E. 837, 839: ‘A statute is passed as a whole, and not in parts or sections; hence each part or section should be construed in connection with every other part or section. It is not proper to confine the attention to the one section to be construed. 2 Lewis' Sutherland on Stat.Const.(2d Ed.) § 368; Biggs v. Clapp, 74 Ill. 335;Cruse v. Aden, 127 Ill. 231, 20 N.E. 73,3 L.R.A. 327.’ This cardinal rule of statutory construction has been frequently announced in our decisions. People v. Linn, 357 Ill. 220, 191 N.E. 450;People v. Hughes, 357 Ill. 524, 192 N.E. 551;People v. Whealan, 353 Ill. 500, 187 N.E. 491. Applying this rule, it is difficult to believe that where the Legislature made provision for interest added after forfeiture by section 129 and interest added before forfeiture in the following section 177 of the same amendatory act, it was intended that the sentence, ‘And all such collections on account of interest shall be paid into the county treasury to be used for county purposes,’ should be limited only to interest added before forfeiture, especially where the entire act is silent as to any different method of distribution of interest added after forfeiture.

Appellees argue that the word ‘such,’ in the quoted sentence from section 177, necessarily limits its application to the payment of interest created by that section or to the 1 per cent. per month interest added before forfeiture. This same argument was made and passed upon by this court in Warner v. King, supra, where the use of the word ‘such’ in section 7 of the Adoption Act (Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 4, § 7) was considered. There it was also argued that under proper rules of grammatical construction the word ‘such’ must refer to the nearest antecedent. In deciding adversely to the contention, this court held: ‘A relative word will not be read as representing the last antecedent exclusively, where the context and clear intention of the law-makers require it to represent several or one more remote. 2 Lewis' Sutherland on Stat.Const.(2d Ed.) §§ 408, 409. The intention of the law-makers is the law. This intention is to be gathered from the necessity or reason of the enactment and meaning of the words, enlarged or restricted according to their real intent. * * * They must surely be read in connection with all the rest of the section, and, if necessary, the entire act, in order to obtain the true intent of the Legislature.’ The word ‘all’ is of much greater significance than the word ‘such,’ in our opinion. The phrase, ‘all such collections on account of interest,’ which is not restricted by language in this or any other section of the act, must be construed to cover the interest and penalties collected both before and after forfeiture, and not limited, as by the lower court, to the interest provided in section 177 alone. Subsequent amendments to different sections of the Revenue Act since 1879 not only show no change in legislative intent with respect to the application of these penalties, but, as will hereafter be pointed out, indicate and express legislative intent not to amend the law to expressly provide for a ratable distribution to all other taxing bodies.

In support of the view that sections 129 and 177 should be construed together, it must be noted that in Illinois the county acts as fiscal agent of the state in collecting the taxes for all of its various political subdivisions. People v. Straus, 355 Ill. 640, 189 N.E. 877. It appears that in thus designating the county to supervise all tax collections the Legislature has seen fit to recompense it for this added work and expense by the payment of these added amounts of interest, penalties and fees. Moreover, a consideration of the revenue laws, and other related statutes concerned with the distribution of tax moneys, shows a clear legislative intent that only the principal of the taxes levied is to be distributed to the various taxing bodies other than the county. Section 243 of the Revenue Act of 1872, as amended (Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 120, § 228) defines the county collector's duties in the distribution of tax moneys to the various taxing bodies ‘payable to them as taxes,’ and requires him to distribute only the principal of the taxes, without making any reference to the interest added thereon. Any penalties imposed under this section for failure to make prompt distribution are required to be paid ‘into the county treasury.’ Section 2 of the Cities and Villages Act (Smith-Hurd Ann.St. c. 24, § 124; Cahill's Stat.1933, c. 24,...