Case Name: Usher versus Taft
Court: Maine Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Maine
Decision Date: 1851
Citations: 33 Me. 199
Docket Number: 
Parties: Usher versus Taft.
Judges: 
Reporter: Maine Reports
Volume: 33
Pages: 199–200

Head Matter:
Usher versus Taft.
A sale of land by a collector for the payment of taxes, under the Act of 1821, chap. 116, is void, if made more than two years from the date of his tax warrant, although the land was duly seized and advertised within the two years.
Writ of entry, submitted on facts agreed as follow : —
The demanded premises were originally the property of the demandant, and he is entitled to possession unless he has been divested of his title by a sale for the payment of taxes.
On the twenty-fifth day of July, A. D. 1838, the selectmen of Weld, in which town the land was, situated, made and delivered to their collector of taxes a warrant in due form, for the collection of the taxes assessed for that year.
The tax against the demanded premises remaining unpaid, the collector by virtue of said warrant, on the sixth day of June, A. D. 1840, gave notice, as required by law, that he would sell said premises for the payment of said taxes, on the tenth day of October, 1840. All the notices necessary were given, as required by law, prior to the 25th day of July of the same year.
On the 10th of October, the collector, agreeably to said notifications, set up the land at auction, and sold it to the tenant’s grantor.
Sherburne, for the demandant.
Tripp, for the tenant.
The Act of 1821, chap. 116, sect. 31, limits the time, within which a sale can be made, to two years from the date of the collector’s warrant. The only question raised by the facts is, whether the sale was too late to be valid.
A tax-sale is made up of the seizure of the property, the publication of the notices and the striking off the land to the highest bidder. If the seizure be made within the two years, the analogies of the law authorize the sale to be completed afterwards. Prescott v. Wright, 6 Mass. 20.
The sale has relation back to the seizure.
The demandant has made no offer to pay the tax. '

Opinion:
Tenney, J., orally.
— The warrant to the collector must have been dated as early as the 25th July, 1838, and the sale was made more than two years after that date. The Act of 1821, chap. 116, under which this sale was attempted to be made, required in sect. 31, that the sale be made within two years from that date. Not having been so made, the sale was void. Tenant defaulted.