Court Opinion

ID: 9854908
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:16:24.857238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:35.861578
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING
*622On appellants’ petition for rehearing.
C. Robert Altman, Albany, argued and reargued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief were Goode, Goode & Altman, Albany.
Thomas C. Stacer, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, argued and reargued the cause for respondents.
Before McAllister, Chief Justice, and Perry, Sloan, O’Connell, Goodwin, Denecke and Holman, Justices.
SLOAN, J.
Shortly after our original decision in this appeal *623the three similar cases from Hood River County① were submitted. These cases presented the same issues as the instant case. The scope of the arguments in all of the cases intensified the need to re-examine the problems caused by our tax foreclosure cases and caused us to doubt that our original decision relative to the state’s adverse possession was correct. Accordingly, we allowed the petition for rehearing in this case to enable us to consider it in pari materia with the other three eases. Our solution to the problem is now found in the opinion in Hood River County v. Dabney, decided February 15, 1967, 84 Adv Sh 179, 246 Or —, 423 P2d 954. That solution makes it' unnecessary to consider the augmented arguments about the state’s adverse possession and our original opinion is withdrawn.
The record in the case relative to the original tax foreclosure reveals that the foreclosed real property was placed on the Lane county foreclosure list on April 14, 1941, as provided by § 110-902, OCLA. The owners of the property named on the foreclosure list were prior owners, not the plaintiffs. The property had been conveyed to plaintiffs by a deed dated and recorded on January 16, 1941. On February 14, 1942, when the sheriff of Lane county received the tax roll, plaintiffs’ names were listed as the owners of the property. On February 16, 1942, Lane county filed its application for a general decree of foreclosure. Section 110-905, OCLA. The property in question was included in this application and the prior owners of *624the property were listed in the foreclosure application, not the plaintiffs. Notice of the foreclosure proceeding was published in the name of the prior owners. Section 110-905, OCLA provided that the person whose name appeared on the latest tax roll shall be treated as the owner of the property in the foreclosure proceedings.
Plaintiffs have never been in possession of the property.
Plaintiffs’ case is based on the theory that the foreclosure was void because they were not named in the foreclosure proceedings because their names appeared on the tax roll two days before the application for foreclosure was filed and that the failure to name them in the application and the published notice of foreclosure invalidated the foreclosure of the property. Our decision in Hood River County v. Dabney, supra, makes it unnecessary to decide whether or not the foreclosure proceeding was void. It is barred by ORS 312.230.
This case was filed prior to the date that the 1961 amendment to the limitation statute, ORS 312.230 was enacted. The specific holding in Hood River County v. Dabney, supra, was directed at the efficacy of the 1961 amendment to ORS 312.230. However, in the instant case, the state did contend that the statute as it existed before the 1961 amendment was a bar to this action.
The amendment to ORS 312.230 found in Oregon Laws 1961, ch 718, p 1475, added to the two year limitation a provision that any action must be filed within six months of the effective date of that amendment. The amendment to ORS 312.230 is merely a part of the emphatic statement of legislative policy *625and intent otherwise expressed in Chapter 718. These policies were examined and applied in Hood River County v. Dabney, supra. As we stated in the opinion in the latter case, the most emphatic statement of policy is that codified at ORS 312.220:
“Any judgment and decree for the sale of real property to the county, on foreclosure for delinquent taxes, is conclusive evidence of its regularity and validity in all collateral proceedings, except where the taxes have been paid or the property was not liable to assessment and taxation. The judgment and decree is prima facie evidence that the taxes have not been paid and that the property was subject to taxation at the time it was assessed. The judgment and decree shall estop all persons raising objections thereto, or to the title based thereon, which existed at or before the date of the judgment and decree and could have been presented as an objection or defense to the application for the judgment and decree.”
This statute was originally enacted in 1907. Oregon Laws 1907, ch 267, § 54. Until our decision in Hood River v. Dabney, supra, this court had not correctly applied this statutory policy as it has been reflected in the statutory time limitation for beginning an action of this kind. The statute limiting the time for challenging the tax foreclosure decree in respect to the property involved in the instant case, Section 110-920, OCLA, was just as effective then as the present statute is today.
Hood River County v. Dabney, supra, cannot be limited to eases filed after the 1961 amendment. That decision removes the previously existing restraints on the statute of limitations as a bar to overdue challenges to tax foreclosure proceedings. Our past decisions like Elliott v. Clement, 1944, 175 Or 44, 149 P2d 985, 151 *626P2d 739, as well as Evergreen Timber Co. v. Clackamas Co., 1963, 235 Or 552, 385 P2d 1009, failed to recognize the import of the statutory limitations on actions to invalidate tax foreclosures. These, and similar cases, must now be overruled.
This action is barred by the statute of limitations.
Affirmed.

 Deardorff v. Hood River County, decided February 15, 1967, 84 Adv Sh 175, 246 Or —, 423 P2d 952; Evergreen Timber Company, Inc. v. Hood River County, decided February 15, 1967, 84 Adv Sh 205, 246 Or —, 423 P2d 963; Hood River County v. Ila N. Dabney, et al., decided February 15, 4967, 84 Adv Sh 179, 246 Or —, 423 P2d 954.