Court Opinion

ID: 9738782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:02:38.732481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:08.395228
License: Public Domain

*613Wilkins, J.
(dissenting, with whom Hennessey, C.J.,
joins). In my view, the court has not previously faced the issue presented in this case. The traditional disproportionate assessment case, unlike this one, has involved a municipality in which the bulk of the real estate was in the single family or residential category and one or more classes of industrial, commercial, or business property were assessed at a higher proportion of fair cash value than the municipality’s residential real estate. In cases of that character, the municipal average and the average of the most favored class are roughly equivalent. The remedy of abating assessments on nonresidential property to the proportion applicable to residential property thus seemed equitable and appropriate. Such was apparently the situation in Assessors of Weymouth v. Curtis, 375 Mass. 493 (1978), a decision in which I did not participate, where for the first time we held, but without analysis, that an abatement to the average of the most favored class of property was required.1
Abatement to the average of the most favored class in this case results in the successful taxpayer’s paying less than it would have paid if the city had assessed all property at 100% of cash value or at the same proportion of fair cash value. As a consequence of the court’s decision, the taxpayer receives a windfall from the city’s violation of the law. I doubt that an abatement to a proportion below the municipal average is required either statutorily or constitutionally, and I do not read the court’s opinion as resting on constitutional grounds or on any explicit statutory mandate. However, there is some logic for the court’s determination to abate the taxpayer’s assessment to the average of the most favored class. In that way, the tax*614payer will be treated equitably in relation to the class which (on this record) obtains the most favorable treatment. The question remains, however, whether the choice selected by the court is truly the better one in this instance and in all other instances, as the opinion seems to indicate.
A decision to grant any abatement, of course, tends to have a negative impact on the revenues of the city. Any shortfall of revenue will have to be made up by an appropriate increase in the tax revenues collected in some subsequent fiscal (tax) year. The increase in taxes to make up for revenue deficiencies resulting from abatements to the average of the most favored class will fall inequitably on those taxpayers whose assessments are above that average. Those disfavored taxpayers will be persons who do not protect their rights by seeking and obtaining abatements. In general, they will be people who do not have the resources or understanding necessary to carry through the process of seeking an abatement.
The procedural requirements of an abatement proceeding are not simple. If every aggrieved taxpayer were to pursue such a remedy, the process would become cumbersome and, from a practical point of view, inadequate. The cost of a hearing before the Appellate Tax Board, involving legal expenses and often expert testimony, is not inconsiderable. A landlord who passes any increase in local real estate taxes through to tenants will have little or no incentive to seek an abatement, and, as a practical matter, individual tenants may not be able to pursue abatement procedures.
It is thus apparent that the windfall to a taxpayer who knows how to and does protect his rights places an extra burden on those who are similarly discriminated against but do not protect their rights. While one might conclude that, in the best of all worlds, a taxpayer who does not protect his rights has made an informed choice not to do so, as a practical matter, in the Alice in Wonderland world into which Boston assessment practices have fall*615en, such informed choices are not made. In its decision to assure equality of treatment between the taxpayer in this case and owners of property in the most favored class, the court has indirectly chosen to heap an additional, and I think, an unfair burden on other taxpayers who already have been treated inequitably.
I prefer a result that gives the taxpayer an abatement to the level at which it would have been assessed if the law had been complied with. Even such a result would not avoid unfairly shifting some burden onto property assessed at more than the municipal average of 50.2% (e.g., as the record shows, triple dwelling units, which have an average assessment ratio of 62.2%), but at least the taxpayer’s windfall would not be shifted to others beyond what is necessary to achieve a reasonably fair result for the taxpayer: — a tax based on its just proportion of the total obligation.
I would reverse the decision of the Appellate Tax Board and order that (with an appropriate adjustment in the tax factor) the abatement be granted to the level of the municipal average.2 Attempts at relief from the general inequity of Boston real estate assessment practices should be made in proceedings brought in direct challenge to the system (see, e.g., Bennett v. Assessors of Whitman, 354 Mass. 239 [1968]; Coan v. Assessors of Beverly, 349 Mass. 575 [1965]; Bettigole v. Assessors of Springfield, 343 Mass. 223 [1961]), and not in individual abatement proceedings where the pattern of relief is haphazard, partial, and, at least in this case, inequitable to others.

 The dictum to the same effect in Shoppers’ World, Inc. v. Assessors of Framingham, 348 Mass. 366, 377-378 n.10 (1965), relied on a principle asserted to be found in Sioux City Bridge Co. v. Dakota County, Neb., 260 U.S. 441, 446 (1923), although that case in fact did not involve different classes of property of which one was the most favored.

 I agree with the opinion of the court that "a taxpayer makes out at least a prima facie case of disproportionate assessment if he shows that his property is assessed at a percentage of fair cash value greater than the average percentage for all taxable property in the city or town,” using the Commissioner of Revenue’s determination under G. L. c. 58, § 10C. Supra at 609.