Lancy v. Snow
| Decision Date | 26 February 1902 |
| Citation | 180 Mass. 411,62 N.E. 735 |
| Parties | LANCY v. SNOW. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
W. O. Childs, for petitioner.
Chas B Snow, for respondent.
This case comes before us on a report from a justice of the superior court, and the respondent contends that by reason of St. 1898, c. 562, § 14, and St. 1899, c. 131, § 2, the justice had no right to make the report. But there is nothing in these statutes that takes away the authority given by Pub St. c. 153, § 6, and St. 1900, c. 311. The case is rightly before us on the report.
The question on which the decision turns is whether the sale for nonpayment of taxes gave the respondent a good title. The parties filed an agreement that the case might be tried on five issues, which were stated, and on these alone. The judge found for the respondent, and reported to this court the question whether, under the evidence and the law, he was authorized to make the finding.
1. The evidence was ample to warrant the finding that the property was not exempt from taxation. It is not necessary to consider it particularly.
2. There was evidence from which the judge might well find that at the time of the taxation the petitioner owned the whole of the property, and not merely a part of it. The application of her father's widow for an assignment of dower had no effect upon the title. The return of the commissioners was never confirmed, and no judgment was rendered thereon, and no decree for an assignment of dower was ever signed. The proceedings for partition, under which it is claimed that the petitioner is the owner of only an undivided half, were not recorded in the registry of deeds until more than 2 years after the tax sale, and 28 years after these proceedings had ended. There was evidence in the conduct and the testimony of the petitioner, and in the conduct of her brother Benjamin Lancy, who was the party to whom the other part was assigned in the partition, that this brother had given her his share of the property more than 20 years before the taxes were assessed, and that she had held under this gift, and had acquired a good title to the whole by adverse possession, if not by an old, unrecorded deed, of which there was some evidence.
3. The third issue is as follows: 'Was the sale invalid because the property was sold for the taxes of two years, at one sale, upon one bid, and for one integral price, if such was the fact?' We are not certain whether this issue was intended to present a question in reference only to a contract of sale made at the auction and consummated by the deed, or whether it includes, as a part of the sale preliminary proceedings in posting notices and advertising in a newspaper. The question does not, in terms, refer to anything earlier than the auction itself. The use of the word 'sale,' and the mention of the bid and the price, with the fact that the parties in their arguments have dealt only with the transaction at the auction, lead us to construe the language as relating only to this transaction. Giving the issue this interpretation, we are of opinion that a sale of this kind is not ivalid because the collector, after proper preliminary proceedings, having taxes for two years to collect by sales of the same property advertised for the same time and place, offers the property at a single sale, under the authority of the two warrants, for the nonpayment of the two taxes. Such a sale was held valid in Pixle v. Pixley, 164 Mass. 335, 41 N.E. 648. This may be a convenient method of collection, which imperils nobody's rights. Of course, to sustain the validity of such a sale, the lien for each tax would need...
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