Adams v. Sleeper

• Decision Date: 16 July 1892
• Citation: 24 A. 990,64 Vt. 544
• Parties: EUNICE A. ADAMS v. GEORGE M. SLEEPER
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

24 A. 990

64 Vt. 544

EUNICE A. ADAMS v. GEORGE M. SLEEPER

Supreme Court of Vermont

July 16, 1892

MAY TERM, 1892

Action of replevin for ten sheep and one colt. Plea, the general issue. Trial by jury at the June term, 1891, Taft, J presiding. The court directed a verdict for the plaintiff. The defendant excepts.

Judgment reversed and cause remanded.

Geo L. Stowe and R. M. Harvey, for the defendant.

OPINION

TYLER

1. The plaintiff claims that the tax was illegal because her personal property and real estate were set in the grand list to B. H. Adams and wife instead of to herself alone. This point does not seem to us well taken. It cannot be said that the property was not set to Mrs. Adams as the owner: the error was in joining her husband's name with hers, as if they were joint owners. Sec. 322, R. L. makes it the duty of the tax payer to procure a blank inventory and fill out and complete the same in all respects as required by law and to return it to the listers on or before April 20th. So far as the personal estate is concerned, it is fairly to be presumed that the listers placed it in the list as it was returned to them, for the legal presumption is in favor of the regularity of the proceedings of public officers. The same may not be true as to the real estate, for the listers could have ascertained the state of the title from the records of deeds and from the list of transfers prepared by the town clerk under section 345.

It is not the policy of the law to invalidate a list on account of errors when the listers have acted in good faith and the errors prove harmless. It seems that upon the refusal of the plaintiff to pay the tax assessed upon the list of B. H Adams and wife her property was taken by the collector of taxes upon the tax warrant, so that the error in inserting the names of both husband and wife in the grand list, as the owners of the property, worked no harm.

2. It is further claimed that the school meeting at which the tax was voted was illegal because the warning for the meeting was not recorded before it was posted, as required by No. 181 Laws of 1888. This question must depend upon whether this act is mandatory or merely directory. Statutes are held to be directory or declaratory, according to the existence or want of certain indications of legislative intent.

"When statutes direct certain proceedings to be done in a certain way or at a certain time, and a strict compliance with these provisions of time and form does not appear essential to the judicial mind the proceedings are held valid, though the command of the statute is disregarded or disobeyed. In these cases by a somewhat singular use of language, the statute is said to be directory. In other cases the statute is held to be imperative or mandatory." Sedg. on Stat. and Cons. Law, 368.

This statute imposes no penalty upon the clerks of school districts for non-compliance with its requirements. It does not declare that school meetings shall be illegal and their proceedings void if held without such a record of the warning. Then what was the real purpose of its enactment?

It is an established rule in the exposition of statutes that the intention of the lawgiver is to be deduced from a view of the whole and of every part of a statute, taken and compared together. The real intention, when accurately ascertained, will always prevail over the literal...