Case ID: ohio-cc-ns_13/html/0558-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

LIEN OF A SEWER. ASSESSMENT.
    Circuit Court of Hamilton County.
    August Glaeser v. City of Cincinnati.
    Decided, November, 1909.
    
      Municipal Corporations — Negligence in Enforcing o Sewer Assessment —Lien not Discharged by Foreclosure Proceedings.
    
    1. A municipality is not a proper party -to an action in foreclosure brought by a building association, and the decree in such a case does . not discharge the lien of a sew.er assessment.
    2. It is gross negligehce for a municipality to fail to prosecute an-action to enforce a sewer assessment for thirteen years -after the answer was filed, hut the lien of the assessment is not discharged so long as the action remains pending.
    
      Drausin, Wulsin and Wm. J. Reilly, for plaintiff.
    
      John J. Gasser, contra.
    Giffen, P. J.; Swing, J., and Smith, concur.
   The city was not a necessary or proper party to the foreclosure suit brought by the building association in which the lien for the sewer assessment involved in this case was set up, nor did the court in that suit render any decree in favor of the city. It is true that upon distribution a sewer assessment was ordered paid, but it does not appear that it was the particular assessment here involved. The sum so ordered to be paid never was in fact paid to the city or the contractors for the use of whom this action was commenced. There was nothing therefore in the record of the foreclosure suit upon which the plaintiff in error could rely when he purchased the property upon which the assessment was a lien.

There was gross negligence on the part of the city in failing to prosecute this action for a period of thirteen years from the time answer was filed, and in the absence of Section 2297, Revised Statutes, the rule stated in the case of Fox v. Reeder, 28 O. S., 181, would be enforced; but that section provides that the lien of an assessment shall continue so long as the. action is pending and the right to enforce necessarily follows.

The judgment must be affirmed.