Case ID: mass_15/html/0148-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Inhabitants of Westbrook versus The Inhabitants of Gorham.
    
      K settlement is gained, in the fifth mode prescribed in the statute, by possession of'an estate set at 200 dollars, and being assessed for the same five years successively, whether the taxes so assessed be paid or not
    The question in this case was whether one Butler, a pauper, had acquired a settlement in Westbrook. It appeared that he had been assessed in the public taxes in the town of Falmouth, of which Westbrook then constituted a part, from the year 1794 to the year 1800, inclusive, for an estate set at more than 200 dollars in the valuation of estates made by the assessors. The pauper was at times insane, and, being in necessitous circumstances, had paid but a very small part of the taxes so assessed upon him, and the portion unpaid was finally abated by the assessors.
    
      Hopkins and Fitch, for the plaintiffs,
    argued that the abatement of the taxes, for the inability of the party to pay them, was tantamount to his having never been assessed ; and they cited an observation made by Sewall, J., in delivering the opinion of the Court in the case of Billerica vs. Chelmsford: 
       “An abatement supposes the assessment not duly made. If the tax be wholly abated, it is as if no assessment had been made ; and if the tax be partially abated, and the residue paid, then all that was duly assessed has been paid.”
    * Longfellow and Adams, for the defendants,
    contended that the payment of any part of the taxes assessed was not necessary to effect the settlement of the pauper. Under the fifth mode of acquiring a settlement, prescribed in the statute,  the possession of an estate of the value required, and being assessed for five years successively, ipso facto, conferred the settlement; and of this opinion was the Court.
    
      
       5 Mass. Rep. 396.
    
    
      
      
        Stat. 1793, c. 24, § 2.
    
   Plaintiff nonsuit.