Hodges v. Town of Kensington
| Decision Date | 02 December 1959 |
| Citation | 157 A.2d 649,102 N.H. 399 |
| Parties | Charles E. HODGES v. TOWN OF KENSINGTON. . Aruged |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Perkins, Holland & Donovan, Robert B. Donovan, Exeter, for plaintiff.
George R. Scammon, Exeter, for defendant.
The chief contention of the defendant is that there was insufficient evidence to support the findings and rulings of the Trial Court.
In tax abatement cases, if a plaintiff shows that his property is assessed at more than its market value, he must go further and show that his assessment is disproportionate to that of other property in the taxing district. Rollins v. City of Dover, 93 N.H. 448, 44 A.2d 113.
Bemis Bros. Bag Co. v. Claremont, 98 N.H. 446, 449, 102 A.2d 512, 514.
The plaintiff's share of the common burden is that proportion of the total tax which the true value of his property bears to the true value of all the other taxable property in the town, and in order to get relief a petitioner must establish on the balance of probabilities that his burden of taxation is disproportionately higher in relation to its true value than that upon all other property in general. Rollins v. City of Dover, supra.
It is not understood that the defendant here disputes this general theory of the plaintiff's tax obligation, but the defendant asserts that since in this type of case the plaintiff is one party and all the remaining taxpayers in the taxing district constitute the other, the plaintiff cannot establish his right to equitable relief based on the evidence of a few isolated instances of disproportionate assessments.
The plaintiff, over the defendant's objection, offered testimony through the defendant's selectman York, a man of twenty-four years' experience in that office, that for the tax year of 1956 the selectmen appraised all of the property in town at its fair market value and applied a ratio of fifty per cent thereof as the tax assessment value. No evidence was offered by the defendant to dispute this method. The evidence was competent. Snow v. Town...
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