Court Opinion

ID: 9486801
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:00:39.791464+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:56.587904
License: Public Domain

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I write separately only to emphasize that I would not want our decision here to be viewed as an endorsement of the government’s sloppy practice of using only part of the legal description of the subject property in an action to foreclose a tax lien and sell the property. The description of this property contained in the defendants’ warranty deed could not be clearer. It begins “... situated in the Township of Delta, County of Eaton, and State of Michigan, viz: ... “ Had the government bothered to include that essential part of the description (without which the remainder is meaningless), the error in the location of the foreclosure sale easily could have been prevented.
*304The requirements of 28 U.S.C. § 2001 relative to the place of sale are intended to increase the probability that the property will be sold at a fair price, and the defendants have a right to have the property sold pursuant to those requirements. Because § 2001 permits sale of the property at the courthouse in the county or city in which the greater part of the property is located, the sale from the federal courthouse in Lansing of the property in issue here would only have been in violation of § 2001 if the property was not in fact located at least partially in the city, regardless of which adjacent county the property was also in. Here, the defendants clearly knew from the outset that their property was not located in the City of Lansing. However, they chose to wait until after the sale to object to the sale’s location, and even then objected only to the designation of the county without making mention of the fact that no part of the property was located in the city. Only when this objection was not successful did they raise the claim that the property is not located within the City of Lansing. Under those circumstances, I agree that the district court cannot be said to have abused its discretion by holding that the defendants had waived any objection to the sale and denying the defendants’ Rule 60(b) motion.