Female Academy of Sacred Heart of Albany v. Town of Darien

• Decision Date: 16 July 1928
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: FEMALE ACADEMY OF THE SACRED HEART OF ALBANY v. TOWN OF DARIEN.

142 A. 678

108 Conn. 136

FEMALE ACADEMY OF THE SACRED HEART OF ALBANY v. TOWN OF DARIEN.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

July 16, 1928

Appeal from Superior Court, Fairfield County; John Richards Booth Judge.

Action by the Female Academy of the Sacred Heart of Albany against the Town of Darien. From a judgment for the defendant and the doings of the Board of Relief of the Town of Darien plaintiff appeals. No error.

Jackson Palmer, C. Milton Fessenden, Matthew H. Kenealy, and Daniel E. Ryan, all of Stamford, for appellant.

Mark W. Norman, of New York City, and Norris E. Pierson, of Stamford, for appellee.

Argued before WHEELER, C.J., and MALTBIE, HINMAN, BANKS, and DICKENSON, JJ.

HINMAN, J.

The scope and application of the provision of chapter 109 of the Public Acts of 1921, which exempts from taxation " buildings or portions of buildings, and the land on which they stand, exclusively occupied by colleges, academies churches, public schoolhouses or infirmaries," and under which the appellant claims exemption, have been considered recently by this court, and requisites of exemption thereunder which are applicable to the instant case stated and applied. Pomfret School v. Pomfret, 105 Conn. 456, 136 A. 88. As was held in that case as to the Pomfret School, it may well be that the course of instruction offered by the institution conducted by the appellant is not such as to allocate the school outside scholastic classification as an " academy" within the meaning of the statute. The principal question to be determined is whether the plaintiff's property is so " sequestered from private and devoted to public use" as to entitle it to exemption from taxation.

This property consists of two tracts of land, aggregating about 17 acres, situated at Collender's Point in Darien, with a large brick and stone mansion house, greenhouses, stables, a pavilion, a log cabin, an outdoor swimming pool, a concrete pier or dock, and other buildings and improvements thereon. The plaintiff conducts on these premises a high-class boarding school for young girls, the pupils ranging in age from 12 to 19 years. None of them have their home residence in Darien, and day scholars are not accepted. The tuition fee is $1,000 per year, with an extra charge for special courses in music, drawing, diction, drama, and deportment. All pupils are required to pay the tuition fee, except that the corporation allows one free scholarship to every twenty pupils enrolled; the number of such scholarships being three at the time in question. The facts found demonstrate that this is not a public institution offering instruction to all comers, but is a private school adapted only to the patronage of those having the means and disposition to separate their children from the public schools, and that it lacks attributes indicative of devotion to such public use as the statute contemplates, some of the most significant of which are mentioned in the Pomfret School Case, pp. 460, 461 (136 A. 88).

It is a further requisite that the property be sequestered and dedicated to such public uses. The plaintiff is a nonstock or membership corporation created by special act of the Legislature of the state of New York in 1861, to be located in Albany in that state, and to be " a seminary of learning, for the education of females." There is no provision in the charter, either expressed or included by reference, precluding the distribution of profits among the members of the corporation, or rendering now inapplicable upon dissolution, the provision of section 35 of chapter 28 of the Laws of New York, 1909, that the property remaining after payment of debts and expenses shall be divided among the persons entitled thereto, who, so far as appears, would be such members. All of the members, the finding states, belong also to the Order of the...