Port Arthur Independent School Dist. v. Baumer
| Decision Date | 27 October 1933 |
| Docket Number | No. 2466.,2466. |
| Citation | 64 S.W.2d 412 |
| Parties | PORT ARTHUR INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST. et al. v. BAUMER et al. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from District Court, Jefferson County; Geo. C. O'Brien, Judge.
Suit by L. C. Baumer and others against the Port Arthur Independent School District and others. From the judgment, defendants appeal.
Reversed and rendered.
B. T. McWhorter, Jr., and A. A. Gunter, both of Port Arthur, for appellants.
Fred A. White, of Port Arthur, for appellees.
This suit was filed in the Fifty-Eighth district court of Jefferson county by L. C. Baumer and twenty-three other property owners of Port Arthur Independent School District, seeking to enjoin the school district, its board of trustees, board of equalization, and its assessor and collector of taxes from fixing alleged excessive and discriminatory valuations on their properties and from assessing and collecting taxes for the year 1932 on such valuations. Before the tax rolls were approved, a temporary injunction was granted, as prayed for, pending final hearing, and upon a trial to the court upon the merits the temporary injunction was dissolved as to some of the complainants. As to the appellees, Baumer et al., the court rendered judgment perpetually enjoining the school district and its officers from levying, assessing, and collecting taxes on their property on the valuations theretofore fixed upon said properties by the board of equalization and enjoining them from assessing and fixing the valuations of the properties of the appellees in excess of certain amounts found by the court to be the reasonable values thereof. From that judgment, the school district and its officers have appealed. The complainants who were denied relief have not appealed.
The court filed findings of fact and conclusions of law. These findings are too long to be set out in this opinion but so far as material to this discussion the fact findings were, in substance:
(a) That the school district officials, in making the assessment of property in the Port Arthur Independent School District for the purpose of taxation for the year 1932, took the values of all properties in said district as assessed for the year 1931 and reduced same 10 per cent.; that said scheme was followed generally throughout the district without variation, and without regard to the actual cash market value of the land and without investigating, hearing, or considering any other facts or circumstances; and that the values so placed on appellees' properties were far in excess of the reasonable fair cash market value thereof at any time during the year 1932.
(b) That the outlying lands of the school district, including the lands of appellees, were zoned for the purpose of fixing values, every acre of land in each zone being fixed at the same value without considering any other fact or circumstance affecting its value and without regard to the fair cash market value thereof.
(c) That the board of equalization heard no evidence and made no personal inspection of the property; that the method pursued by the officials of the school district in arriving at the valuation of property in the district resulted in fixing valuations on appellees' properties which are "discriminatory, confiscatory, illegal, arbitrary and void, and in contravention of article 8, section 1 of the Constitution of the State of Texas"; and that said valuations are greater than those fixed on the great majority of other lands in the school district of like nature and location.
As to the matter of excessive valuations of appellees' properties, the court, in the findings and the judgment, fixed what he considered the valuations of their properties for taxation and enjoined the assessing of said properties at any higher valuations. The values fixed by the board of equalization and by the court respectively on the properties of appellees are as follows:
Value fixed by Board Value fixed
Name of Equalization by Court
L. C. Baumer $ 9,810.00 $ 5,400.00
H. E. Brinkman 41,670.00 25,002.00
H. C. Dailey 15,750.00 9,765.00
John Fett 7,425.00 1,417.00
Phillip Fett 5,450.00 3,311.00
Fred Gaertner 11,790.00 9,639.00
T. W. Hughen 13,500.00 10,800.00
Bennie Schreeb 7,650.00 5,355.00
D. S. Smith 10,908.00 7,506.00
Appellees made timely appearance before the board of equalization and protested the valuations so fixed.
Complainants' pleadings contain allegations forming a proper basis for these findings.
Considerable testimony was elicited upon the trial of the case, most of it from officials of the school district. The valuations fixed upon the properties of the various complainants by the board of equalization and the method of arriving at such valuations were gone into at considerable length. After carefully considering the entire record, we have reached the conclusion that when the evidence is given its proper legal effect, the trial court's findings to the effect that the board of equalization pursued an illegal scheme or practiced fraud or its equivalent, in arriving at the valuations on appellees' properties, are without support.
The evidence wholly fails to show that the tax assessor and the board of equalization simply took the valuations for the year 1931 and reduced them 10 per cent. Mr. Ira Avant, a member of the board of equalization, testified that while it was the purpose of the board to reduce valuations of property in the district generally 10 per cent., that such plan was not rigidly followed or applied in all cases. With reference to this matter the witness testified upon cross-examination:
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