Court Opinion

ID: 9865218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:27:27.039686+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:56.097840
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Holland, dissenting.
The majority opinion herein is another bridge across the gap between insufficient legislation and public interest, and over which profiteers may safely travel. Public interest is involved in this case, and to sanction the trans*379action herein questioned is to approve that which is against public policy.
The court, not the legislature, has said that bulk sales of tax certificates held by a county, or the preference of a purchaser thereof, is prohibited. This bespeaks the spirit of the law that is not so lettered. But there is a way around this supposed barrier, and the present case affords the formula. Being first mindful of the surrounding facts, ask the question: What was the true intention of the parties to this deal? There can be but one answer: It clearly was intended, and so agreed, that a discount on a given number of certificates satisfactory to the company be fixed upon its offer, so that it might become the purchaser. The resolution of the board followed immediately, which itemized the discount on the bulk of the certificates and calculation fixed the price. For whom? Did the party need to be named? I know and the reader knows. It could have been the messenger entrusted with the delivery of the commissioner’s resolution to the treasurer, with the resolution in one hand and its money in the other. Was the stage set? Unquestionably so, and the actor furnished at the public’s expense. The door should not be so opened for clandestine colluders. I contend that there is more iniquity concealed in this, now approved, method, than there possibly could be in an open act of the commissioners, not unduly influenced, in saying it is for the best interest of the county that a certain number of certificates may be sold to John Jones for a named price. The public then would be advised, and if irregularities were present, they could be isolated and corrected. In either event, the purchaser should have no greater rights than one who purchases at the original regular tax sale, and whose only right is a deed if the property is not redeemed in due course. An original purchaser pays the full amount due the county, and the public has no cause for complaint. In this case, however, the unnamed preferred purchaser is given a two-fold opportunity; that is, either to profit at the expense of the county and other tax*380payers, or receive a deed to the property. It is not without the realm of possibility for faithless commissioners, in proceeding’s of the character here involved, to give preference to a friend or an obligee.
Let it be understood that I do not in any way question the integrity of the commissioners or the agent of defendant in error, in the transaction here involved; I believe both acted in accordance with what may be the customary method of attempting to stay within the letter of the law and decisions of this court, and that they did so in good faith, but I condemn the custom, if it may be said to be a custom.
I think the judgment should have been reversed in part, to the end that defendant in error be permitted to recover only the amount it paid for the certificates with allowable interest. The court’s failure in this respect has elicited this my expressed disapproval of its action in affirming the judgment.
Mr. Justice Hilliard, also dissenting.'
I think it clearly appears that at the conclusion of the negotiations between the parties, one of the terms agreed upon was that in the event the owners of the property redeemed from the tax sales, then the purchaser of the certificates should only enjoy the return of its investment and interest. I concur in the concluding* paragraph of Mr. Justice Holland’s dissent.