Inhabitants of Dresden v. Bridge
| Decision Date | 19 July 1897 |
| Citation | 90 Me. 489,38 A. 545 |
| Parties | INHABITANTS OF DRESDEN v. BRIDGE. |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
(Official.)
Report from supreme judicial court, Lincoln county.
Action by the inhabitants of Dresden against Edmund Bridge, executor of the will of Samuel J. Bridge, deceased, to recover a tax. Submitted on report. Judgment for defendant.
J. H. & J. H. Drummond.
Jr., for plaintiff. L.C. Cornish, for defendant.
STROUT, J. Samuel J. Bridge, an inhabitant of plaintiff town, died on the 6th day of November, 1893, testate. On the 5th day of December, 1893, defendant was duly appointed his executor. In the assessment of taxes in Dresden in April, 1894, after the statute notice to bring in lists of taxable property had been given, and no list of the Bridge estate had been furnished, the assessors, in accordance with Rev. St. c. 6, § 93, judged the estate liable for taxation upon personal property to the amount of $8,800, and assessed a tax upon that amount, which has been paid. On November 28, 1894, the assessors made a supplemental assessment upon personal property of the amount of $359,503.94, and committed the same to the collector, with their certificate that that estate was omitted from the April assessment by mistake. This supplemental tax was assessed "Samuel J. Bridge, Est. of," and amounted to $7,369.83, to recover which this suit is brought.
Two principal grounds of defense are relied upon:
(1) That the supplemental tax was unauthorized, and is invalid, because there was no omission from the April assessment "by mistake"; and
(2) Because the tax assessed to "Samuel J. Bridge, Est. of" was not a legal assessment against the defendant as executor, and created no personal liability against him.
In regard to the supplemental assessment, the statute provides (Rev. St. c. 6, § 35) that, "when any assessors, after completing the assessment of a tax, discover that they have by mistake omitted any polls or estate, liable to be assessed, they may, during their term of office, by a supplement to the invoice and valuation, and the list of assessments, assess such polls and estate." Section 92 of the same chapter provides for notice to the inhabitants to bring in lists of taxable property; and section 93 that, "if any person after such notice does not bring in such list, the assessors shall ascertain otherwise as nearly as may be, the nature, amount and value of the estate, real and personal, for which in their judgment he is liable to be taxed," and bars any application to the assessors or county commissioners for any abatement of the tax, unless he offers such list, and satisfies them that he was unable to offer it at the time appointed.
In this case no list was furnished, and the assessors, in the April assessment, acted under the provisions of section 93, and adjudged the value of the personal estate to be $8,800. Mr. Cate, one of the assessors, testified that when the April tax was assessed, he knew Mr. Bridge was a man of large estate, that he had in his lifetime given to institutions in the town, for the benefit of the town, between forty and fifty thousand dollars,—such gifts as are only made, or can be made, by men of large wealth. With this knowledge, and with the right to doom this estate, without right of appeal for abatement, the assessors deliberately, as their judgment, inventoried the personal estate in gross at $8,800, and assessed a tax upon that amount. They thus, in April, exercised and exhausted the right and power given them by section 93, and could not rejudge the matter after completion of the assessment and committal to the collector. The "mistake" mentioned in section 30 by which were "omitted any polls or estate," and which alone justifies a supplemental assessment, relates only to an "omission," and does not mean that an erroneous judgment of the value of an estate taxed can be corrected by a supplemental assessment. When the inventory of the estate was returned to the probate court, the assessors attempted, by the supplemental assessment, to revise and correct their estimate of the value of the personal estate, which they had once estimated and assessed. They had not "omitted" any item of personal property in April, but had doomed the personal estate in the aggregate. Finding subsequently that the aggregate personal property was more than their estimate, they sought to make a new valuation. No element of omission by...
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Greenbush Cemetery Ass'n v. Natta
...liable for the tax, but, if the assessment be to the “estate” of the deceased, they are not personally liable.-Inhabitants of Dresden v. Bridge, 90 Me. 489, 38 Atl. 545. [h] (Mass. 1891) An executor or administrator must not only make the return called for by Pub. St. c. 11, § 38, of the pr......
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...lack of information or otherwise, have erred in their judgment of the quantity, quality, or value of the thing assessed. Dresden v. Bridge, 90 Me. 489, 38 A. 545. If the assessors have once assessed * * * that assessment cannot be revised by a supplemental assessment". 98 Me. 145, 56 A. In ......
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