Harwood v. Inhabitants of North Brookfield

• Decision Date: 05 April 1881
• Citation: 130 Mass. 561
• Parties: George Harwood v. Inhabitants of North Brookfield
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

130 Mass. 561

George Harwood v. Inhabitants of North Brookfield

Supreme Court of Massachusetts

April 5, 1881

Argued October 8, 1880

Worcester. Contract to recover $ 250, the amount of a tax assessed by the defendant town upon personal property of the plaintiff, and paid by him under protest.

At the trial in the Superior Court, before Wilkinson, J., without a jury, the plaintiff offered evidence tending to show that, in the year 1878, he was an inhabitant of the defendant town and taxable therein for real and personal estate; that he did not file with its assessors a list subscribed by him of his estate liable to taxation, although such list was required by the assessors under the Gen. Sts. c. 11, §§ 22, 23; that the amount of his tax for that year was estimated by the assessors, assessed by them and committed with their warrant to the collector; that subsequently, and prior to September 15, 1878, a further assessment upon the plaintiff of $ 250 was made by the assessors for alleged personal property exceeding in amount $ 100, by them discovered after issuing the warrant and omitted therefrom, and that amount was entered in the collector's list, and collected of the plaintiff by compulsion of law, and paid into the defendant's treasury; and that said personal property was never in fact owned by him, or subject to taxation as his property.

But the judge excluded the evidence offered, and ordered judgment for the defendant. The plaintiff alleged exceptions.

Exceptions of the plaintiff Overruled.

G. F. Hoar & R. Hoar, for the plaintiff.

W. S. B. Hopkins, for the defendant.

Lord, J. Colt, Morton & Field, JJ., absent.

OPINION

Lord, J.

The general rules of law in relation to taxation in this Commonwealth are substantially prescribed by statute, and judicial decisions upon such statutes have been so frequent that it rarely now happens that any new question arises upon them. In the case at bar, there is no difference between the counsel except upon the construction of the St. of 1868, c. 320, as amended by the St. of 1873, c. 272. That statute, so amended, is as follows:

"Section 1. When the assessors of any city or town, after the time when their warrant has been committed to the collector of taxes, shall discover that the real or personal estate of any person, to an amount not less than one hundred dollars, and liable to taxation, has been omitted from the last annual assessment of taxes in such city or town, said assessors shall proceed forthwith to assess such person for such estate in like manner as he should have been assessed in such last annual assessment. The taxes so assessed shall be entered in the tax list of the collector of the city or town, and he shall collect and pay over the same in the manner specified in his warrant: provided that such tax shall not be assessed after the fifteenth day of September for any such omission.

"Section 2. No tax of any city or town shall be invalidated by reason that, in consequence of the provisions of this act, the whole amount of the taxes assessed in such city or town shall exceed the amount authorized by law to be raised."

The claim of the plaintiff is, that this is a new tax, and that in order to constitute it a legal tax, the assessors must in fact find property of the party taxed; that the rule of law well established in relation to the overvaluation or overtaxation of a party liable to taxation on the first of May has no application to a tax of this kind; that the taxation made as of the first of May was the execution of a duty upon the part of the assessors, and in the performance of that duty they might assess to a person assessable not only all the property which they know him to be possessed of, but they might add to that any amount they pleased, restrained only by their official oath, for which assessment, however extravagant or even unconscionable, the assessed party has no remedy except an application for abatement; that the assessors being vested with this great power and having once exercised it, they have done their work and have no power to alter or amend it; that the only contingency upon which they are authorized to tax for anything other than they have already assessed is the discovery of property owned by a party of which the assessors were ignorant at the time of the assessment; that their right to act depends upon the existence of the fact that he is the owner of that property; and that, such ownership being a condition precedent to the right of the assessors to act at all, their whole proceeding in reference to the taxation was without authority and...