Boyd v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 23 December 1890
• Citation: 12 S.E. 744,86 Ga. 379
• Parties: BOYD v. WILSON.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

12 S.E. 744

86 Ga. 379

BOYD v. WILSON.

Supreme Court of Georgia

December 23, 1890

Syllabus by the Court.

1. The levy of a tax fi. fa. describing the property seized as " 1/4 of lot No. 931, in the 12th Dist. and 1st section of Lumpkin county, Georgia," is sufficiently definite and certain, the meaning of the same being not any particular fourth, but one-fourth of the lot undivided.

2. The year for redemption of property sold for taxes runs from the date of the sale, and not from the time when the sheriff's deed is recorded.

3. A purchaser at a tax-sale duly made under a legal levy, who is neither implicated in nor aware of any fraud contemplated by the selling officer, is not affected thereby.

Error from superior court, Lumpkin county; WELLBORN, Judge.

M. G Boyd and Harrison & Peeples, for plaintiff in error.

Price & Charters, for defendant in error.

BLECKLEY C.J.

After a previous writ of error in this case was disposed of, ( Wilson v. Boyd, 84 Ga. 34, 10 S.E. 499,) the case was tried again in the court below, and resulted in a nonsuit, to the granting of which Boyd, the plaintiff excepted.

1. The first question now to be considered is whether the levy of the tax fi. fa. upon the property in controversy is sufficiently certain and definite. The deed made by the sheriff to Wilson, the purchaser at the tax-sale, described the property as "all that tract or parcel of land situate, lying, and being in the twelfth district and first section of Lumpkin county, and known as the undivided one-fourth of number nine hundred and thirty-one, containing in the whole lot forty acres, more or less," whereas the levy and sheriff's advertisement both described it thus " 1/4 of lot No. 931, in the 12th Dist. and 1st section of Lumpkin county, Georgia." The point made is that the description in the levy and advertisement does not sufficiently indicate that one-fourth of the lot undivided was seized and advertised. We think the description signified this, and could signify nothing else. It did not specify or indicate any particular fourth of the lot, and, if it would apply as well to one-fourth as another, it could not have been intended to point out or designate any particular fourth. There is nothing, therefore, for it to signify but some part of the lot in an undivided state, and that part is definitely indicated as "one-fourth," neither more nor less. In 2 Co. Litt. 190, (b) it is said: "Also, if a man seised of certain lands infeoff another of the moiety of the same land without any speech of assignment or limitation of the same moiety in severaltie at the time of the feoffment, then the feoffee and the feoffor shall hold their parts of the land in common. And the like law is if the feoffment be made of a third part or a fourth part," etc. In Adams v. Frothingham, 3 Mass. 352, it was held that a conveyance of a moiety of a piece of land in quantity and quality creates an estate in common, but it would seem from the language of Littleton, quoted in the above passage, that the words "quantity" and "quality" in this description were superfluous. And see Lick v. O'Donnell, 3 Cal. 59, cited in McAfee v. Arline, 83 Ga. 645, 10 S.E. 441. In Keaton v. Forrester, 63 Ga. 206, the decision was put by this court, not upon the insufficiency of the levy, but upon the failure of the evidence to establish title or possession in the defendant in fi. fa. so as to change the onus. We think what we have held above is correct, but suppose it to be incorrect as a general rule of law, and so it would be perhaps tested by the case of Ronkendorff v. Taylor, 4 Pet. 349, yet, under the special facts of this...