City of Rockland v. Inhabitants of Union

• Decision Date: 11 March 1905
• Parties: CITY OF ROCKLAND v. INHABITANTS OF UNION.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

60 A. 705

100 Me. 67

CITY OF ROCKLAND

v. INHABITANTS OF UNION.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

March 11, 1905.

Exceptions from Supreme Judicial Court, Knox County.

Action by the city of Rockland against the inhabitants of Union. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants except and move for a new trial. Motion and exceptions overruled.

Argued before EMERY, WHITEHOUSE, STROUT, SAVAGE, and POWERS, JJ.

James E. Rhodes, 2d, and D. N. Mortland, for plaintiff. R. I. Thompson and Joseph E. Moore, for defendants.

POWERS, J. Action for pauper supplies furnished to one William L. Knowlton. The case comes here on exceptions and motion by defendants.

It was admitted that the pauper had his derivative settlement in the town of Lincolnville, but it was claimed by the plaintiff that he acquires a settlement in the defendant town by having his home there, without receiving pauper supplies, during the five years from his becoming of age, on March 20, 1875, to March 20, 1880. Defendants did not claim that the pauper received any pauper supplies during that period, or that he thereafter acquired a settlement in any other place. The issue at the trial, therefore, was narrowed down to the single question whether the pauper had his home in the defendant town for the five years named. This the defendants denied and claimed that the pauper left Union without any intention of returning to it as his home, and lived in Rockland a part of that time. In support of their contention the defendants offered to prove that the pauper was not assessed a poll tax in Union during the years from 1875 to 1879, inclusive, and that he was so assessed in Rockland from 1877 to 1880, inclusive, but made no claim that he had paid such tax or acknowledged it as an existing liability.

The first exception is to the exclusion of this evidence. This court has recently held, for reasons which it is unnecessary to restate at length here, that "assessors of taxes are not agents of the town, but public officers. Their acts in omitting to assess a tax against an individual are but expressions of their opinion, but are not entitled to be considered as evidence upon that question." Rockland v. Farnsworth, 93 Me. 178, 44 Atl. 681. Standing alone, neither the act nor omission of the assessors in the assessment or nonassessment of a tax on an individual can be evidence for or against a town on the question of the residence of such individual. The doings of its assessors in the assessment of taxes are not the acts or admissions of the town, for they are not its agents. The assessment of a tax is no admission on the part of the pauper, unless coupled with...