Keegan v. Assessors of Boston

• Decision Date: 10 May 1956
• Parties: Elizabeth A. KEEGAN v. ASSESSORS OF BOSTON.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 136

134 N.E.2d 136

334 Mass. 169

Elizabeth A. KEEGAN v. ASSESSORS OF BOSTON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued Feb. 6, 1956.

Decided May 10, 1956.

Arthur D. Altman, Boston (Michael Bergner, Boston, with him), for taxpayer.

Samuel Bonaccorso, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Boston, for Assessors of Boston.

Before QUA, C. J., and RONAN, SPALDING, COUNIHAN and WHITTEMORE, JJ.

RONAN, Justice.

Boylpark Inc., the owner of a parcel of land in Boston, on January 1, 1951 was assessed the annual real estate tax for 1951 upon said premises. In January of that year it conveyed the land to the second mortgagee, one Raldne Corporation, in lieu of a foreclosure. Boylpark Inc. on September 26, 1951, filed an application with the assessors for an abatement of the tax. Raldne Corporation conveyed the premises on October 31, 1951, to the appellant, Elizabeth A. Keegan, and she on the same day paid the tax in full. She filed an appeal in her own name with the Appellate Tax Board on March 26, 1952, because of the failure of the assessors by December 26, 1951, to act on the abatement sought by Boylpark Inc. in its application of September 26, 1951, and the consequent denial thereof. The Appellate Tax Board dismissed her appeal on the grounds that the assessors were without authority to grant an abatement to her, that the Appellate Tax Board could not abate a tax that the assessors could not abate, and that, having failed to file an application with the assessors, she had no standing to appeal to the Appellate Tax Board. Her appeal from the decision of the Appellate Tax Board brings the case here.

The question is whether the appellant as purchaser of the property and the payer of the taxes has the right to prosecute in her own name the proceedings for the abatement of the tax which were begun on September 26, 1951, by the filing of an application by the person to whom the tax had been assessed, although the appellant never filed any application for an abatement with the assessors.

A proceeding for the abatement of our real estate tax is of statutory origin, and one seeking an abatement must comply with the various steps comprising the statutory system, one of the first and constituent parts being the filing of an application upon an approved form containing certain information and filed with the assessors on or before a designated date. Board of Assessors of Boston v. Suffolk Law School, 295 Mass. 489, 4 N.E.2d 342; Old Colony Railroad v. Board of Assessors of Quincy, 305 Mass. 509, 511-512, 26 N.E.2d 313; Old Colony Railroad v. Assessors of Boston, 309 Mass. 439, 441, 35 N.E.2d 246; Assessors of Boston v. Neal, 311 Mass. 192, 40 N.E.2d 893.

Prior to the amendment of G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 59, § 59, by St.1933, c. 165, § 1, a purchaser of the premises subsequent to the assessment date had no standing to bring and maintain an application for an abatement of the tax because he was not a person to whom the tax had been assessed as the law then stood. Hough v. North Adams, 196 Mass. 290, 82 N.E. 46; Dunham v. Lowell, 200 Mass. 468, 86 N.E. 951; Choate v. Board of Assessors of Boston, 304 Mass. 298, 23 N.E.2d 882. The amendment increased the class of persons to whom the remedy by abatement was made available and read as follows: 'If a...