Court Opinion

ID: 9759747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:26:47.713173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:04.434406
License: Public Domain

' Coktfokd, P. J. A. D.,
Temporarily Assigned, dissenting. In reversing the Appellate Division decision in this matter, the court, in my view, basically recasts the legislative tax exemption on behalf of schools, churches, hospitals and miscellaneous other benevolent and charitable institutions (N. J. S. A. 54:A-3.6) from one of buildings, with only incidental and limited exemption of appurtenant land, so as to extend it to exemption of lands used for such purposes in gross. This determination can have very extensive fiscal implications for our hard pressed municipalities. It constitutes a basic change in tax policy heretofore accepted as the legislative intent for at least 70 years, Sisters of Charity v. Cory, Coll’r, 73 N. J. L. 699 (E. & A. 1907); Stevens Institute v. Bowes, 78 N. J. L. 205 (Sup. Ct. 1909), and as such constitutes a determination which should be made only by the Legislature, not the judiciary.
The very tenor of the statute, even as partially set out in the Court’s opinion, emphasizes the legislative intent that the primary object of the tax exemption is “buildings” used for the stated purposes. “Land” is exempted only if the land
(a) is that “whereon * * * the buildings are erected”;
(b) “which may be necessary for the fair enjoyment thereof”;
(c) “which is devoted to” the exempted purpose; and
(d) “does not exceed 5 acres-in extent”.
Analysis will disclose that exemption of lot 1A hero involved (63.4 acres) would violate the statute in respect of requisites (a), (b) and (d) aforementioned.
As to (d), the 5-acre limitation, it is settled that the statute allows up to 5 acres of land for each exempted building. Pingry Corp. v. Hillside Tp., 46 N. J. 457, 465 (1966). This does not mean, however, that the owner is necessarily entitled to an exemption of that number of acres of land *407represented by the product of the number of buildings multiplied by five. Each building is entitled to a maximum of five acres of land exemption, but only if and to the extent necessary for the fair enjoyment of that building. If the fair enjoyment of a group of buildings is feasible within a five-acre tract, five acres is the limit of the allowable land exemption, not five times the number of buildings. This principle is illustrated by Institute of Holy Angels v. Bender, 79 N. J. L. 34 (Sup. Ct. 1909), cited as authoritative in Pingry Corp. v. Hillside Tp., supra (46 N. J. at 465). In Bender, a seven-acre tract on which a number of exempt buildings of the subject school was situated was held exempt only to the maximum of five acres for the group. The land in excess over the five acres was held taxable, the court apparently regarding the remainder as not necessary for the fair enjoyment of the buildings. 79 N. J. L. at 36-37.
Consistently with the foregoing, this Court in the Pingry Gorp. ease, supra, cited with approval the Assessors Law Manual of the Local Tax Bureau, Division of Taxation, which indicated that “the assessor [was] to examine the land to determine what amount of acreage [was] ‘necessary to the fair enjoyment of the subject building’, but that in any event no land in excess of five acres for each building should be exempted”. 46 N. J. at 466. (emphasis added).
Applying the foregoing principle to the instant facts, it would appear highly unlikely that each of the fifteen sleeping cabins occupied by the campers and the staff required a separate five acres of land for its fair enjoyment. The same applies to the miscellaneous other buildings on lot 15, the original camp site, with which lot 1A is sought to be joined as an integral exempt whole. There is no basis within this record to find that the 33 acres of lot 15 were not adequate in the aggregate to provide for the fair enjoyment of all of the 28 structures situated thereon before the acquisition of lot 1A. ,;
I appreciate, of course, that the Court’s thesis is that the camp lands on lot 1A may fairly be regarded as necessary *408for the prosecution of an integrated camping project as an entirety. But a concession of the validity of that proposition is not a concession of entitlement, in the legislative contemplation, of exemption of the entire 97 acres of land. The statute does not grant unqualified exemption of all property, undifferentiated, used for the favored purposes specified therein. It clearly contemplates that the building is to be “the principal factor in the scheme” of exemption, Children’s Seashore House v. Atlantic City, 68 N. J. L. 385, 390 (E. & A. 1902), and that the land exemption is appurtenant to that of the buildings and extends only to such land as is necessary for the fair enjoyment of a specific building (not to exceed five acres per building).
The Division of Tax Appeals found these to be the uses of the land on lot 1A:
The extra land was needed and used specifically for pioneer camping, a program in which campers trail blaze to a suitable location on the lands and set up an area for a three to four day stay. The lands also are used in an attempt to teach the camper to know a supreme being in his natural surrounding and to practice conservation. In addition, instruction is given on said lands in self-preservation, existence in wooded areas, map and compass reading and astronomy. Further, the lands are used for conservation and ecological programs such as tree planting, soil testing and natural treasure hunts in addition to hikes and nature study.
It is obvious that these pursuits are quite unrelated to the fair enjoyment of the buildings on lot 15, e. g., the sleeping cabins. They would qualify lot 1A for exemption if the statute exempted “lands” used for charitable or benevolent purposes, rather than “buildings” with the qualified exemption of lands appurtenant thereto which we find in the statute. Cf. Children’s Seashore House v. Atlantic City, supra.
Under the fundamental principle of strict scrutiny of claims for exemption from taxation, Princeton Univ. Press v. Princeton, 35 N. J. 209 (1961), the Boys’ Club has failed to establish that any of the land in lot 1A, much less all of it, is necessary for the fair enjoyment of the buildings on *409lot 15, or any of them, in any sense fairly contemplated by the pertinent statutory requisite.
The thesis maintained above is abetted by the express statutory requirement that the land sought to be qualified for exemption must be shown to be that whereon the buildings are erected. This has been held to mean that the land must be in the nature of the curtilage of the building — the building being the primary object of the intended exemption. Stevens Institute v. Bowes, supra (78 N. J. L. at 208). The statutory specification that the only land subject to exemption as related to an exempted building is that upon which the building is erected is so plain and unambiguous that our courts have always felt obliged to enforce it with strictness. Thus, in Children’s Seashore Souse v. Atlantic City, supra (68 N. J. L. at 388-389) the Court said: “And such exemption can only be extended under the statute to the land on which the buildings are erected, and not to its lands elsewhere”. And, of most authoritative pertinence, is the decision of the Court of Errors and Appeals in Sisters of Charity v. Cory, Coll’r, supra, which was regarded as dispositive by the Appellate Division. At the time of that decision the 5-acre limitation was not a part of the exemption statute. The owner organization sought exemption for a tract of 316 acres of land part of which was acquired after the erection of the exempt building. In denying exemption for the after-acquired land the Court said (73 N. J. L. at 702) :
The language of the exemption clause, as it stood upon the statute book in 1S90, is that “all buildings used for charitable purposes, with the land whereon the same are erected, and which may be necessary for the fair enjoyment thereof, shall be exempt,” &e. The primary object of the exemption is the building. Included with it in the exemption is a certain portion of land. Not all the land held in the same ownership and used for the same purposes, but only the land ivhereon the building is greeted. These words are plainly words of limitation. No land of a charitable organization other than that upon which its building has been erected is exempted from taxation under this provision of the act. If it acquires a tract of land and erects thereon a building which it devotes to uses exclusively charitable, and afterwards purchases other lands which it devotes *410to' the same uses, such after-acquired property, whether it be adjacent to or located at a distance from the original building, is not within the exemption provision. It is not the land upon which the building is erected. This limitation in the statute is just as clearly expressed, and should be given as much force as that which declares that only so much of the land upon which the building is erected as may be necessary for its fair enjoyment shall escape taxation. The statute creates a double test, to be applied for the purpose of determining whether or not a given parcel of land is entitled to exemption from taxation — first, is it the very tract upon which the building was erected, or does it include land acquired at a period subsequent to the erection of the building? Second, if it is the tract upon which the building was erected, then is all of it necessary for the fair enjoyment of the building? Lands which do not meet the double test cannot escape taxation. It follows, therefore, that those parcels of land belonging to this charitable organization which have been acquired by it since the erection of its original building, and upon which no buildings have been erected which are exclusively devoted to the purposes of its organization, are not exempted from taxation by virtue of the provision of the General Tax law which has been referred to.
(emphasis in the original).
It seems to me impossible to evade the logic of the foregoing reasoning. Equally compelling is the fact that the Legislature has never changed the statute to alter that adjudicated construction. Yet I would be tempted to modify the rigor of the Cory rationale to allow an exemption for after-acquired land if the purpose and the nature of its use were so closely related to the direct physical use of the exempted building that the expanded tract could nevertheless still be regarded, in the common understanding, as the curtilage of the building. An added parking lot for a church or school would be an apt example. But to go to the extent of the decision of the Court in the instant case is to read out of the statute any realistic significance of the statutory language, “the land whereon any of the buildings * * * are erected”. In no reasonable sense are the 28 buildings situated on lot 15 to be regarded as “erected” on the 63-acre lot 1A. As already indicated, and here restated for emphasis, I believe that in dealing with a tax exemption statute a court is *411simply without warrant to disregard plain and unambiguous legislative language to confer an exemption not qualifying therewith merely because the court believes it to be good policy or sensible to reach that result. The public revenues are solely for -the dispensation of the elected legislative body.
In any case, I believe the court may not confer jurisdiction on the Division of Tax Appeals to consider a claim for exemption for the tax years 1973 and 1974. No appeals were filed with the county board of taxation from the assessments for those years, and it is therefore clear that the Division of Tax Appeals is without jurisdiction over the subject matter of the assessments for those years. Hackensack Water Co. v. Division of Tax Appeals, 2 N. J. 157, 164-165 (1949). Since Camden v. Pleasantville, 109 N. J. Super. 475 (App. Div. 1970), certif. den. 56 N. J. 474 (1970) and City of Newark v. Essex County Bd. of Taxation, 110 N. J. Super. 93 (Law Div. 1970), reach a different result without consideration of the controlling effect of the Hackensack Water Co. case, I agree with the Court that they should be overruled.
However, I disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the Division of Tax Appeals is vested with jurisdiction over the assessments for the tax years 1973 and 1974 because appellant relied upon the holdings in the last mentioned cases in not having filed county board appeals for those years. Nothing can create subject-matter jurisdiction of a court or of a special statutory tribunal if the constitutional or statutory prerequisites to such jurisdiction have not been satisfied. 21 C. J. S. Courts § 35 b, p. 45. Thus, neither waiver nor consent confers jurisdiction where the tribunal otherwise has no jurisdiction over the subject-matter. De Feo v. Recorder’s Court of Belleville, 129 N. J. L. 549, 550 (Sup. Ct. 1943). Accordingly, the majority’s thesis that appellant’s reliance upon past decisions (which I do not concede has been shown here) can create subject-matter jurisdiction has no jurisprudential foundation. Cf. Hartford Ins. Co. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 68 N. J. 430 (1975).
*412For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman, Clifford and Schreiber — 6.
For affirmance — Judge Conford — 1.