Opinion ID: 1503246
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Plaintiff Taxpayers are Seeking to Force the Taxing Authorities to Assess at Full Value and They Are Entitled to Such Relief.

Text: The plaintiff taxpayers assert in their complaint not only their undoubted right to equality of treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Hillsborough case, but also their right to assessments levied at true value in accordance with our Constitution and the statutes. Thus paragraph 18 of the complaint sets forth in full the requirement of our Constitution that real property be assessed according to the same standard of value, and the following paragraphs quote from the various pertinent statutes herein referred to requiring assessments at full value. The Appellate Division of the Superior Court recognized that the issue of assessment at full value was before it when it stated: Respondents,    filed a complaint    charging    that the increases resulted, not in the accomplishment of the statutory mandate to bring about the taxation of all property in the county or in the taxing district equally and at its true value,   . 28 N.J. Super. 110. The defendant board of taxation presented under point 4 of its original brief in this court its contention that although the complaint set forth that the county board had failed to levy the increased assessments in accordance with the requirements of the New Jersey Constitution, still the assessments were valid, utterly misconstruing Delaware, L. & W.R. Co. v. City of Hoboken, 10 N.J. 418, 433 (1952), supra, as holding that the constitutional provision was a mandate to the Legislature and not to the assessing officials. The plaintiff taxpayers, of course, briefed the matter under point 10 of their original brief and argued it extensively at the oral argument. On the reargument point 3 of the county tax board's brief bore the following caption: The County Board can revise and correct assessments to the percentage of full value used in the municipality and need not revise and correct 100% of full value where such percentage has not been applied by the local assessor in making his assessments. while the plaintiffs' answering argument was entitled: Our statutes command the County Board to fix assessments at true value. The Board knowingly and wilfully disobeyed this mandate. Its order, for that reason, is a nullity. and the question was argued by both sides. The right asserted by the plaintiffs to have all property assessed at true value is not an administrative matter; it is a matter in the highest degree substantive and we are not redressing fully the injuries sustained by the plaintiffs merely by enjoining discrimination in assessments. The plaintiffs are entitled to have all property assessed at true value, because otherwise the evil consequences pointed out by the State Tax Policy Commission ( supra ) are inevitable. It is difficult enough to achieve assessment at true value, but when various scales of percentages of true values ranging as we have seen from less than 10% to over 60% (at the oral argument counsel for the county tax board frankly stated that there is one municipality with an assessment ratio of 8% to true value) are employed by the local assessors without warrant of law or any publication thereof, the average citizen has no yardstick to guide him in determining whether his assessment is in line with his neighbor's. He is working in the dark as to an essential factor in the computation of his tax. The very existence of such an unknown percentage of true value as the basis of assessment inexorably leads to discrimination and the very lack of equality which the majority would banish. Worse than that, it leads to what the State Tax Policy Commission tactfully and with rare restraint calls  a matter of more or less gentle bargaining process that over the years has created a host of insecure `favorable' conditions.  Putting the matter bluntly, it means that many have obtained tax favors at the expense of others, by means not disclosed. It also means that many others are afraid to appeal their existing assessments under the Royal case for fear of retaliation. This is not a situation that should be permitted to prevail once it is brought to the attention of a court of general jurisdiction. It creates a rule not of law, but of favoritism. The difficult art of assessment is rendered impossible of accomplishment. I can conceive of no issue more important for decision or crying more loudly for our adjudication, nor can I imagine any sound reason for not deciding the issue. No dire consequences would flow from recognizing the existence of the statutes commanding assessment at true value and giving effect to them. The partial assessments of all property would not, of course, be a nullity, as the majority thinks; the assessments would simply be increased to full value. Our courts are not and never have been put in the absurd position where they must either affirm or deny a judgment; modification of a judgment is a familiar solution of many appeals. It may well be that it would be impossible to enforce these statutes for the year 1952 without untoward results, but the taxing process is an annual occurrence and the court can and should give directions to the taxing authorities to avoid a repetition of their violation of the statutes in question. It can and should do so for the taxes which are to be assessed as of October 1, 1954 for the tax year 1955 and also for the taxes to be assessed in all subsequent years. Such a course would be in accord with familiar principles of law. This, as we have said, is a proceeding in lieu of a prerogative writ. Such actions, though administered for historical reasons in the Law Division proceed on equitable principles. Thus in Ward v. Keenan, 3 N.J. 298, 309 (1949), we said: In determining what course to pursue under the new practice in this field we should look to the decisions on the old procedure on prerogative writs, not as controlling authorities but for what light they may throw on the instant problem of presenting sound rules of procedure. Much light may also be gained from examining the practice in analogous cases of equitable procedure, for it is becoming increasingly clear, now that discretion in granting of the writ has been abolished, that the procedural principles applicable in the two fields are in many respects identical. Among the well known equitable principles guiding judicial action is the rule that equity will not make a vain decree. Decrees that would in the final result be nugatory should not be made, Fiedler, Inc., v. Coast Finance Co., Inc., 129 N.J. Eq. 161, 169 ( E. & A. 1941). Manifestly, an order made in the summer of 1954 to reassess at true value for the year 1952 all the property in Essex County  a process that would necessarily take many months  would completely upset the taxing machinery of the municipalities and of the county, if indeed the data for such a reassessment for 1952 were available, which is doubtful. Not only for this reason but also because it would seriously interfere with the current work of the county board of taxation, such an order would indeed prove to be an ineffective and vain decree. On the other hand, we should not hesitate to authorize the trial court to direct the county board of taxation to conform to all of the pertinent statutes requiring assessments at full value for the year 1955 and all subsequent years. Accordingly, I would instruct the trial court to order the defendant Essex County Board of Taxation to take the necessary steps to see to it that the assessments for the year 1955 throughout the county are made at true value as of October 1, 1954, R.S. 54:4-23, in accordance with the pertinent statutes and not to approve any tax duplicates of the local assessors that are not prepared on the basis of true value, R.S. 54:4-35, R.S. 54:4-47. There is every reason to believe that the Essex County Board of Taxation would welcome such instructions because it is one of the few county tax boards that has made any steps in the direction of equalization. If we do not take such action we not only deprive private litigants of relief on a basic right of very real importance to them but we will be flaunting the will of the Legislature without anyone being furnished any mode of relief and the acts providing for assessment at true value would continue as dead letters on the statute book. It cannot be doubted that many assessors who are now subjected to political and personal pressures would welcome relief therefrom by direction of the courts directing assessments at full value just as the police and municipal magistrates rejoiced in the protection which the nonfixable traffic violations ticket afforded them. But in the light of what has gone on in this State for years, the assessors cannot be expected to conform to the statutes directing assessments at true value without explicit direction from this court. Indeed, were any of them to proceed to levy assessments on property in their taxing districts in the face of this court's studied refusal to countenance the true value statutes they would be in danger of being deemed recreant to the local custom of assessment at some undisclosed percentage under true value. Nor should the plaintiff taxpayers fail in their pursuit of assessments at full value by reason of any of the niceties of procedure that surrounded the use of the prerogative writs at common law and that were abolished by the new Constitution and the rules adopted pursuant thereto. It was to avoid such technicalities that it was provided in the Constitution of 1947: Prerogative writs are superseded and, in lieu thereof, review, hearing and relief shall be afforded in the Superior Court, on terms and in the manner provided by rules of the Supreme Court, as of right, except in criminal causes where such review shall be discretionary. Art. VI, Sec. V, par. 4. I would affirm the judgment below with instructions to the trial court as herein indicated. I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice BRENNAN joins in this opinion. For affirmance  Justices HEHER, OLIPHANT, WACHENFELD, BURLING and JACOBS  5. For modification  Chief Justice VANDERBILT and Justice BRENNAN  2.