City of Grand Rapids v. Iosco Land Co.
| Decision Date | 10 December 1935 |
| Docket Number | No. 74.,74. |
| Citation | 273 Mich. 613,263 N.W. 753 |
| Parties | CITY OF GRAND RAPIDS v. IOSCO LAND CO. et al. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Bill of interpleader by the City of Grand Rapids against the Iosco Land Company and the Michigan Trust Company and another, trustees of the estate of Charles F. Young, deceased. Decree for the Michigan Trust Company and Leland N. Young, as trustees of the estate of Charles F. Young, deceased, and the Iosco Land Company appeals.
Affirmed.Appeal from Superior Court of Grand Rapids, in Chancery; Thaddeus B. Taylor, Judge.
Argued before the Entire Bench.
Penny & Clark, of Muskegon (N. B. Kelly, of Jackson, of counsel), for appellant Iosco Land Co.
Travis, Merrick, Johnson & McCobb, of Grand Rapids, for appellees Michigan Trust Co. and Leland N. Young, trustees.
In 1925, the city of Grand Rapids by appropriate action widened Division avenue, a state trunk line highway. It paid abutting property owners for the land taken and levied an assessment on the real estate benefited by the improvement for part of its cost. This embraced a parcel of property then owned by the trustees of the estate of Charles F. Young, deceased. The assessment was payable in ten equal parts, but all could be paid at once, at the option of the taxpayer. The trustees paid $16,045.30, the entire amount of their assessment, on May 16, 1928. In 1931, in accordance with an option given some time theretofore and after a judicial determination of the right to sell the property (see Young v. Young, 255 Mich. 173, 273 N.W. 535,77 A.L.R. 963), proper deeds were executed conveying the title to the property to the Iosco Land Company.
In 1933, almost two years after the conveyance and approximately five years after the tax was paid, the Legislature enacted Act No. 107 of the Public Acts of 1933, § 19-a(5), par. (d), p. 146, which provided that certain sums should be used by the city for ‘the payment or refunding to the taxpayers, without interest, of all or any portion of the special assessment or assessments for the cost of opening, widening or improving any state trunk line highway within any incorporated city or village, which cost was levied as a special assessment or assessments pror to this amendatory act: Provided, That the legislative body of such city or village desiring to come under this subdivision shall so determine: * * * Provided, That when such payment and/or refund shall be determined by such legislative body, the same shall apply in equal pro rata benefits to all lands so assessed for such special assessment or assessments.’
The obvious purpose of Act No. 107, supra, was to make it possible to secure relief to taxpayers through the use of weight and gasoline tax collections for the payment or refund of special assessments levied for the construction of highways. Pursuant to this act, the city commission of Grand Rapids adopted a resolution extending the due dates of the sixth and subsequent installments of the assessment for widening Division avenue for two years, and further providing ‘that of all moneys received under the Horton Act, available under subdivision (d), section 5 of Act 107 of the Public Acts of 1933, fifty per cent. thereof, not however, to exceed the amount due on any one installment, shall annually be set aside and paid in liquidation of said tax, refunds to be made therefrom to those who have paid their tax in advance.’ The city of Grand Rapids thus has on hand the sum of $1,604.58, which would have been the sixth part of the assessment against the property formerly belonging to the Young estate, had it not been previously paid. It seeks to refund this amount to the proper party and has filed a bill of interpleader to determine whether to make payment to the trustees of the Young estate or the Iosco Land Company, both of whom are claimants. The Iosco Land Company contends that it is entitled to the refund as the owner of the property at the time the payment of the refund was authorized; that had not such advance payment been made, the land company would have assumed it, and paid less for the property, subject to the assessment; that notwithstanding the fact that subdivision 5 of the act recites the ‘refunding to the taxpayers,’ nevertheless its manifest purpose was to relieve property from the assessment inasmuch as it provides that the payment or refund shall apply in equal pro rata benefits to all land so assessed. The trustees of the Young estate contend that Act No. 107...
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Smith v. City Comm'n of City of Grand Rapids
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