Shelton College v. Borough of Ringwood

• Decision Date: 06 December 1957
• Docket Number: No. A--573,A--573
• Citation: 136 A.2d 660,48 N.J.Super. 10
• Parties: SHELTON COLLEGE, a corporation, Appellant, v. BOROUGH OF RINGWOOD, a municipal corporation, Respondent. . Appellate Division
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

Page 10

48 N.J.Super. 10

136 A.2d 660

SHELTON COLLEGE, a corporation, Appellant, v. BOROUGH OF RINGWOOD, a municipal corporation, Respondent.

No. A--573.

Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division.

Argued Dec. 2, 1957.

Decided Dec. 6, 1957.

Jerome C. Eisenberg, Newark, for appellant (Eisenberg & Spicer, Newark, attorneys).

Louis Wallisch, Jr., Passaic, for respondent (Wallisch & Wallisch, Passaic, attorneys).

Before Judges GOLDMANN, FREUND and CONFORD.

PER CURIAM.

This appeal seeks an adjudication that the appellant is entitled to exemption from taxation for a part of the tax year 1954 of certain property upon which it operates a college but to which it did not obtain title until February 16, 1954. Appellant was organized as a New Jersey corporation February 3, 1954. The Division of Tax Appeals held against the exemption on the ground that the claimant was not in ownership of the property on October 1, 1953, relying upon Jabert Operating Corp. v. City of Newark, 16 N.J.Super. 505, 85 A.2d 216 (App.Div.1951). Appellant asks that the cited case be declared unauthoritative for a number of reasons, none of which we find persuasive.

Ever since Jersey City v. Montville Tp., 84 N.J.L. 43, 85 A. 838 (Sup.Ct.1913), affirmed on the opinion below in 85 N.J.L. 372, 91 A. 1069 (E. & A.1913), it has been uniformly recognized by the tax administration authorities of this State that the status of property for purposes of exemption Vel non is conclusively determinable upon the basis of whether or not the statutory criteria of ownership and use were met on the day fixed by the statute as the assessing date, which now and long past has been October 1 preceding the tax year. N.J.S.A. 54:4--1; and see N.J.S.A. 54:4--23, 35. Application of that test determines the right of exemption or the burden of taxation for the entirety of the ensuing tax year (but see L.1949, c. 144, infra). The declaration in the Jabert case, supra, was merely an affirmation of what had long been understood to be the law. Appellant attacks the ruling in Jabert on the ground it did not consider the decision in Borough of Edgewater v. Corn Products Refining Co., 136 N.J.L. 664, 57 A.2d 39 (E. & A.1948). That case dealt with the construction of R.S. 54:4--56, N.J.S.A., and we think it clear it has no bearing upon the rule here involved.

Appellant is confronted not only with Stare decisis but with the effect of the rule of construction arising from legislative treatment of a statute previously judicially construed without disturbance of the result of such construction. State v. Moresh, 122 N.J.L. 77, 79, 3 A.2d 638 (E. & A.1939); Delaware, L. & W.R. Co. v. Division of Tax Appeals, 3 N.J. 27, 37, 38, 68 A.2d 749 (1949). The tax statutes construed in the Montville case were revised on subsequent occasions, and there was a general revision of all the statutes, including those dealing with taxation, in 1937. At no time prior to 1949 was the rule of Montville disturbed. In that...