Court Opinion

ID: 7814766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:31:47.621929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:34.350744
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, J., dissenting. The appellants had the burden of proving that the 1935 tax sale was void and that the State’s deed to the appellee therefore conveyed no title. The meager record in this case contains, in my opinion, no evidence to sustain the appellants’ attack upon the appellee’s title. The majority hold that the sale was void for the reason that the taxes had actually been paid. The facts are that the appellants and their predecessors in title had, for many years prior to 1935, paid the taxes on a five-acre tract in the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter, perhaps in the belief that they were paying on five acres in the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter. As far as the record shows the five acres now in dispute had never been separated on the tax books from the rest of the forty-acre tract. Apparently someone else paid the taxes on the entire forty acres until it forfeited for nonpayment of the 1935 taxes. It is quite plain that if there was in fact any double taxation it was with respect to the other five-acre tract, on which the appellants and their predecessors were paying by mistake, and of course that fact would not ordinarily affect the validity of the tax sale involving the forty acres noAv owned by the appellee. The most that can be said from the record is that the owners paid taxes on the wrong five acres, by mistake. The sole question then becomes: by whose mistake ? If the error was made by the taxing officials the sale would be void. Schuman v. Person, 216 Ark. 732, 227 S. W. 2d 160, 21 A. L. R. 2d 1269. But if the mistake was that of the taxpayer it would not affect the validity of the sale. As we said in Schmeltzer v. Scheid, 203 Ark. 274, 157 S. W. 2d 193: “Appellants allege, and the allegation is not disputed, that they thought they had paid the taxes every year on the two blocks in question, but it will require no argument to show that one may not discharge his obligation to pay his taxes by showing that he thought he had paid them when his misapprehension was not induced by some officer charged with the duty of collecting the taxes, and no such contention is made here.” Even a mistake by the taxing official does not invalidate the sale if the landowner is equally at fault. In Redfern v. Dalton, 201 Ark. 359, 144 S. W. 2d 713, the landowner paid his money to the county clerk and directed that officer to redeem the land from a 1933 forfeiture and also to satisfy the currently due taxes for 1934. The clerk effected the redemption but failed to pay the current taxes. In holding that the clerk’s error did not invalidate the sale we said: “If it be said that the clerk should have included the 1934 taxes in the 1933 redemption certificate, it may be answered that he did not do so, and any inspection of the certificate would have disclosed the fact that it did not purport to cover the 1934 taxes . . . Taxes cannot be discharged in this manner, and the court below properly held that they had not been paid.” It is unnecessary to cite other decisions to the same effect. It is settled by many prior cases that a landowner cannot plead his own mistake as a basis for setting aside a tax sale unless that mistake was induced by the taxing officials. There is a presumption that those officers perform their duty. Since the burden of proof was on the appellants and they failed to offer any evidence whatever to show that they were misled by the public officers, the chancellor had no choice except to follow the decisions of this court and uphold the appellee’s title. His decree should be affirmed. Millwee and Ward, JJ., join in this dissent.