Case ID: serg-rawl_8/html/0344-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Stewart and others against Graffies and others.
    IfthepreCounty°Com°an foe Comity*0 Treasurer, for the sale of unseated lands on which taxes have been assessed and paw! under iiti^Aprif 1799,3d ’ April, 1804, and 4th April, 1809, do not describe the land ordered to be sold,, it confers no authority on the Treasurer to sell it.
    In Error.
    THE defendants in error, the plaintiffs below, brought ejectment the Common Pleas of Lycoming county, for a tract of land Which they claimed under a sale for taxes, made under the Acts of 11th April, 1799, 3d April, 1804, and A4.i *nrxr\ ÁpTÚ^ 1809.
    At the trial, several exceptions were taken to the opinion the Court, both in deciding points of evidence, and in their charffe to the jury ; but as this Court gave an opinion on one exception only it.is unnecessary to state them. 1
    
    Burnside, for the plaintiffs in error, ' 1
    Campbell, contra.
   By the Court.

The plaintiffs offered in evidence a number of papers, which were objected to by the defendants, and admitted by the Court. One of these papers certainly was not evidence, and upon that only, we now give our opinion. The paper to which I allude, is the precept of the Commissioners to Thomas Hays, Treasurer of Lycoming county, to make sale of certain lands on which-taxes had been assessed, and were unpaid. This precept does not describe the land now in dispute, nor any other land, except by reference to an annexed schedule, in which, it is said, that the several tracts of land ordered to be sold, were particularised. But no schedule was annexed to the paper offered in evidence, nor was it attempted to be proved that any such schedule, had ever existed. So that the precept admitted in evidence, did not appear to have any relation to the land in dispute, or to confer on the Treasurer any authority to sell it. It was perfectly irrelevant, and ought not to have been received as evidence. It is the opinion of the Court, therefore, that the judgment should be reversed, and a venire facias de novo awarded.

Judgment reversed, and a venire facias de novo awarded.