Collins v. Welch

• Decision Date: 23 December 1887
• Citation: 38 Minn. 62
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court
• Parties: NATHANIEL T. COLLINS <I>vs.</I> MARY J. WELCH and Husband.

38 Minn. 62

NATHANIEL T. COLLINS vs. MARY J. WELCH and Husband.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

December 23, 1887.

Plaintiff brought this action in the district court for Ramsey county, to determine defendants' adverse claims to a certain piece of land. The defendant Mary J. Welch alleged title under a tax sale made on December 18, 1874, for the taxes of 1873. The action was tried by Brill, J., who ordered judgment for defendants. The plaintiff appeals from an order refusing a new trial.

McMillan & Beals, for appellant.

J. F. Fitzpatrick, for respondents.

MITCHELL, J.

This was an action to determine an adverse claim made by defendant to certain real estate under a tax judgment rendered pursuant to Laws 1874, c. 1. The only question presented is the validity of the judgment. The only objection made to it is an alleged error as to the amount of the tax in the published list. It has been repeatedly held by this court that, under the law of 1878, such a mistake in the delinquent list, either as filed or as published, is not jurisdictional. Plaintiff, however, claims that the rule was otherwise under the statute of 1874. This depends upon the grammatical construction to be given to section 113 of that act, a question which we do not find it necessary to consider or determine in this case.

The filed list shows that the amount of tax against the land was $1.15, and the judgment against it is for $1.15. The evidence shows that in the published list, at the head of said list, immediately following the notice, there appeared at the right-hand column of figures:

                                                              "Amount of Taxes
                                                              "Delinquent for 1873
                                                              "$"
                

The amounts followed thereafter in columns in regular order, with the words "Delinquent for 1873," at the head of each succeeding column, and the last two figures of each amount in each column being separated from the others by a broad space. The word "Amt." appeared on every column, but the dollar-mark found at the head of the first column was not repeated in the succeeding columns; nor was there any dot or line between the figures in any of the columns in the list, but, as before stated, there was this space separating the two last figures on the right hand from the remaining figures of each amount in all the columns.

We remark at the outset that we are of opinion that the dollar-mark found at the head of the first column must be understood as applying to all the succeeding columns. In Tidd v. Rines, 26 Minn. 201, (2 N. W. Rep. 497,) where the question involved was the validity of the judgment, and where the figures denoting the amount were the same as here, except that there was no dollar-mark at the head of the column, we held that the judgment was too vague and indefinite as to amount to be upheld or enforced as a valid judgment; that, in the absence of any line or decimal-mark to distinguish the dollars from the cents, by no legal intendment could any such effect be given to the greater intervening space between them; that the inference as to the purpose and object of that space was one of fact, and not of law, and that the final judgment of a court — the sentence of the law — must possess that...