Court Opinion

ID: 9779007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:32:30.720598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:19.482536
License: Public Domain

On Second Petition to Rehear
The counsel for Edgar Allen Lee, Sr., made oral application to the Chief Justice at his chambers for leave to file a second petition to rehear in this case. Pending consideration of the application the counsel appeared in open Court at Knoxville and presented his petition, with supporting brief. While there has not been a formal compliance with the rules of the Court, we will nevertheless make response to the petition insofar as it attempts, for the first time, to question the constitutionality of Section 3 of Chapter 28 of the Public Acts of 1947.
*621In this application for leave to file another petition to rehear, the first haying been denied, the counsel undertakes to reargue every issue raised in the original petition for certiorari, and the first petition to rehear. It is again reargued that the decree of sale of the property to satisfy the State’s lien for delinquent taxes is void because of inadequate description of the property, the contention being made that there w.as no description sufficient to satisfy the law’s requirements. The same authorities are cited as in the original petition as if they had never been cited and considered by the 'Court.
Another issue reargued is that the delinquent taxpayer, who was a defendant in the tax suit, had no notice that sale would be confirmed at Chambers of the Chancellor. We discussed this issue at length as shown by our response to the first petition to rehear.
The petitioner again insists, as if it too had been overlooked, that Code Section 1611 is not applicable to the case at bar, and that this Court and the Court of Appeals erred in holding that it was applicable and controlling.
We think we have made adequate response to these issues and respectfully decline to make any further response. A petition to rehear is never granted to enable counsel to reargue issues that have been fully considered by the Court. Louisville & N. R. Co. v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 125 Tenn. 658, 148 S.W. 671.
The only new question that is presented in this second petition is, as follows:
“We earnestly insist that the said tax proceeding of State ex rel. v. Austin is void as against the rights of Boy Bose, had no effect upon his title, and that his conveyance to this petitioner vested petitioner with valid title to the land involved in this case be-*622canse it violated Sec. 8, Art. 1 of the Constitution of Tennessee, providing that no man shall be deprived of his property but by judgment of his peers or the law of the land, and violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, providing that no man shall be deprived of his property except by due process of law.”
The foregoing insistence is based solely upon the assumption that every step taken in the tax suit was void. The petitioner elects to ignore the fact that Rose has never in any proceeding attacked the delinquent tax sale; has never claimed any lack of notice of the suit, or notice that the sale would be confirmed by the Chancellor on a day certain; has never paid any taxes upon the land in question for at least twenty-five (25) years prior to the sale. He executed his quitclaim deed to the property to petitioner, which was in and of itself notice that the petitioner was buying* the lands subject to all the imperfections complained of in the original bill. The petitioner stands upon no higher ground than his vendor Rose.
Coming now to the alleged invalidity of Chapter 28 of the Public Acts of 1947, and petitioner’s contention that he is, by this proceeding and especially the opinion of this Court and the Court of Appeals, being deprived of his property without due process. The petitioner proceeds upon the theory that Rose conveyed to him a valid and subsisting title and that the State’s deed to W. P. Seals and the latter’s deed to Tenn-Cumberland Corporation was a cloud upon Rose’s title and that as a matter of law it was a cloud on petitioner’s title. The plain fallacy of this insistence is that Rose had no title to convey. The entire argument presupposes that Rose could maintain an action to recover possession of the *623property without first complying with Code Section 1611, i. e. tendering the amount of taxes and penalty due, and that petitioner by virtue of bis quitclaim deed succeeded to tbe same indefeasible right.
We think tbe Act herein assailed could not by any stretch of tbe imagination have any retrospective effect as to tbe petitioner, be having no vested interest in tbe land when the said Act took effect. It conclusively appears that Bose executed bis quitclaim deed to petitioner more than three years after tbe Act took effect. It is entirely too late for him to step into tbe shoes of tbe delinquent taxpayer and make tbe defense of a lack of due process.
In conclusion it should be said that only persons who have a vested interest in lands at tbe time this statute was enacted are in a position to question its validity on tbe ground that it is retrospective. Whether or not “trespassers” upon such lands could plead it as a bar to “any suit by such owner to protect bis title” is an open question. It is not before us in tbe instant case.
Disregarding tbe provisions of tbe assailed statute, and pretermitting its constitutionality, we think tbe undisputed facts in tbe record, tbe applicable decisions cited in our prior opinions, and especially Code Section 1611, supra, fully sustains tbe opinion of tbe Court of Appeals. Tbe petition is accordingly denied.