Court Opinion

ID: 9633872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:04:39.358657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:14.945011
License: Public Domain

September 30, 1957
CROCKETT, Justice
(dissenting).
The decision runs counter to the fundamental principle that in order to deprive a legal owner of his property through tax proceedings the requirements of proof and of law must be strictly complied with.1
The difficulty in this case as presented to us on review is a failure of proof. The only suggestion that the plaintiff had any interest in the property must be inferred *363from the contents of an entry in the abstract of title containing certain recitals purporting to indicate that the interests of San Juan County (if any it had) were transferred to Peterson. No other document was introduced which would give the plaintiff the benefit of any presumption of the regularity of antecedent tax proceedings. This would not be accomplished by the unacknowledged auditor’s tax deed the representation of which is included in the abstract. It seems to me that it is of the utmost importance to a proper determination of the issues in this case to take into account the fact that the document in the abstract purporting to represent a deed,, which was introduced in evidence, is not endowed by law with any special attributes of proof and is unsupported by any proof other than its own recitals, which are not competent evidence of anything.
No statute exists making a deed from the county prima facie evidence of the regularity of tax proceedings. It does not prove: the prime requisite that there was any tax levied upon or tax lien attached against the property; that there was any tax sale or forfeiture of the property to the county relieving the property of any tax lien; nor was the propriety of any of the tax proceedings in connection with such property shown. In fact the purported deed did not even indicate an acknowledgment so it is not aided by our statute which provides that the deed together with the certificate of acknowledgement is self-proving.2 From anything that appears such a document may have come into existence by mistake, inadvertence or even by some machination or fraud against the legal titleholden There is simply no proof of what its import or effect may be.
There being a failure of proof as to any means by which the county acquired any interest in the property, from aught I can see, the county is no more than an interloper in the chain of title, and the plaintiff Peterson stands in no better position.
Concerning the four-year statute of limitations3 I do not gainsay that if Peterson had taken and held possession for four years under a tax title, as defined in the statute, he would be clothed with protection. But this presupposes that he had some sort of tax title to claim under. The words of that statute, that it applies even if the tax title proves defective, cannot properly be construed to mean that the statute of limitations applies to protect one who has no tax title at all.

. Divas v. Petersen, 5 Utah 2d 280, 300 P. 2d 635.

. 78-25-13, U.C.A. 1953.

. 78-12-5.1, U.C.A. 1953 as amended.