Pitts v. Booth

• Decision Date: 01 January 1855
• Citation: 15 Tex. 453
• Parties: WILLIAM C. PITTS AND OTHERS v. JAMES BOOTH, GUARDIAN.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

15 Tex. 453

WILLIAM C. PITTS AND OTHERS

v.JAMES BOOTH, GUARDIAN.

Supreme Court of Texas.

1855.

A failure of the assessor and collector to post a list of delinquent taxables, as prescribed by the statute, is a fatal objection to a tax title.

See what is said in this case as to land being taxed in the name of the present owner, instead of in the name of the original grantee.

Lands held by survey of conditional certificates are not taxable, and a tax sale of such lands is therefore void.

The act of February 4, 1854, authorized the county commissioners to issue unconditional certificates of headright to the assignees of conditional certificates; and a stranger cannot object that an unconditional certificate so issued was unlawful, on the ground that it was based upon an assignment of the conditional certificate, which was forbidden by law.

Where, in a suit respecting real estate, the plaintiff hath an inchoate title at the commencement of the suit, which is perfected in a patent before the trial, it is no objection to the admission of the patent in evidence, that it issued after the suit was commenced.

Appeal from Guadalupe.

J. Ireland, for appellants.

Thornton, for appellee.

LIPSCOMB, J.

This suit was brought by the appellee, as guardian, against the defendants, to recover six hundred and forty acres of land, granted to his wards as the heirs of Edward Dickinson, who was the assignee of George W. Edwards. The title commenced by a constitutional headright certificate to Edwards, issued by the board of land commissioners of Bexar county. In 1842, Edwards makes an unconditional deed in fee, with warranty, of the land so by him held by a constitutional certificate, to Edward Dickinson. The conditional certificate to Edwards was, by the board of land commissioners for Gonzales county, made the ground of the unconditional certificate to the heirs of Edward Dickinson, on the 28th of August, A. D. 1854, on which last certificate the patent issued from the general land office to the heirs of Dickinson, on the 18th day of October, 1855. Edward Dickinson, the ancestor of the plaintiff's wards, had died in 1848, and hence the unconditional certificate and the patent were issued to his heirs.

The defendants in the court below set up possession and permanent improvements in good faith under a tax title for taxes assessed to George W. Edwards for the assessment of 1848. On the trial the judge charged the jury that they could regard the tax title, on the question of improvements made under a possession in good faith, but not as giving title to the defendants. This charge is believed to be fully as favorable to the defendants as the law would authorize. The defendants, though they assigned this ruling of the court as error, have not, in their brief, attempted to sustain the validity of the tax title. The court erred in the charge, because if the tax title was invalid, it could give no equity to the holder, and was not a ground on which he could support his suggestion of improvements in good faith; and so this court decided in Robson v. Osborn (13 Tex. 298). The...