Baldwin v. City of Elizabeth
| Decision Date | 21 October 1886 |
| Citation | 42 N.J.E. 11,6 A. 275 |
| Parties | BALDWIN v. CITY OF ELIZABETH. |
| Court | New Jersey Court of Chancery |
Bill to quiet title. On final hearing on pleadings, proofs, and stipulations of counsel.
W. P. Wilson, for complainant.
F. Bergen, for defendant.
RUNYON, Ch. The bill is filed under the act "to compel the determination of claims to real estate in certain cases, and to quiet the title to the same." With this case, several others, brought by other complainants against the same defendant, for like relief, and under a similar state of facts, were argued. The questions presented under all of them will, for convenience, be considered and disposed of in this opinion. The city sold land of the complainants for non-payment of taxes for years prior to 1879 for the term of 900 years, becoming itself the purchaser at the sale.
It is insisted that such sales, and the certificates made in pursuance thereof, are nullities, because a sale of land to the city for unpaid taxes for a term exceeding 50 years is unauthorized by law.
The city sold land of the complainants for the unpaid taxes of 1879, and became itself the purchaser, and such sale was for a term of 50 years; but the complainants insist that the sale was made after the expiration of the lien for taxes given by law, and it appears that those taxes were assessed under an unconstitutional law. There are, upon the properties of the complainants, assessments for municipal improvements laid by the city under the city charter, which provided for laying such assessments by a rule which was in contravention of the constitutional rights of the land-owners, and the assessments were so laid. It is insisted by the complainants that this court should declare that such assessments, for that reason, constitute no lien upon the lands. On the other hand, the city insists that this court ought not to declare the befor-ementioned tax sales and certificates null and void except upon condition that the complainants respectively pay the taxes, with interest, thereon assessed against them, respectively, for non-payment whereof their lands were sold.
The sales of land to the city for a term of 900 years for non-payment of taxes was unauthorized by law. Schatt v. Grosch, 31 N. J. Eq. 199; Morgan v. Elizabeth, 44 N. J. Law, 571. It should be decreed (but on terms as hereinafter stated) that the sales, and the certificates thereof, convey no estate or interest in the property. The sales of land for the taxes of 1879 were for a term of 50 years. The tax was, however, assessed under an unconstitutional law. Morgan v. Elizabeth, ubi supra. The complainants insist that on that ground the sales and certificates for that tax should be declared null and void, and that it should be decreed that the tax is no lien or incumbrance upon the property. The complainants had a remedy at law by certiorari. Revision, p. 1045, § 16; Morgan v. Elizabeth, ut supra. If they have lost it, it is by reason of their laches. This court has always been unwilling to interfere to restrain the collection of a tax which is illegal and void, merely because of its illegality, but requires that there be some special circumstances attending the injury threatened to bring the case within some recognized head of equity jurisdiction. Dusenbury v. Newark, 25 N. J. Eq. 295; Bogert v. Elizabeth, Id. 426; Lewis v. Elizabeth, Id. 298. And in Jersey City v. flessor, 31 N. J. Eq. 255, it was expressly held that the act to quiet titles does not apply to cases where a party in possession of land can throw the hostile claim into a course of law, and thus get rid of the cloud upon his title, or when, having had the power to do so, he has lost it by his inaction.
It is urged that the sales for the tax of 1879 were made after the expiration of the law. The charter of the city provides that the tax shall be a lien for four years, (the sale took place within that period;) but the general law provides that the lien for unpaid taxes shall continue for two years. Both provisions were in force when the amendments to the constitution were adopted,...
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