Court Opinion

ID: 9697766
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:29:11.674103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:35.198416
License: Public Domain

O’Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). It has been said that
all contracts by which one may recover money from another are choses in action. 1 Swift’s Digest 170; see 7 Words & Phrases (Perm. Ed.) 133. But the broad concept of such a definition is inapplicable to our tax statute. We have previously held that the chose in action which § 1745 of the General Statutes subjects to taxation must involve a debt from one “who is under an obligation to the creditor to pay, and against whom the latter has a right to receive and enforce payment.” Lenox Realty Co. v. Hackett, 122 Conn. 143, 147, 187 A. 895; Eric v. Walsh, 135 Conn. 85, 91, 61 A. 2d 1. The limitation which these quoted essentials set up makes taxable only that species of choses in action whose owner has carried out whatever obligations he may have agreed to perform under the contract. As long as there remains unfulfilled some promise on his part, he has no right to enforce payment, and until the *276debt is enforceable the chose in action is nontaxable. Eric v. Walsh, supra, 92.
It should be noted in passing that the Eric case, cited by the majority in support of their opinion, presented a situation where the owner of the chose in action had executed his agreement. Nothing remained to be done by him other than to collect the debt. Obviously, Eric owned a taxable intangible.
The contract between the decedent here and the purchaser remained, during the decedent’s life, executory on both sides. The majority say that “Nothing remained to be done.” This is contrary to the facts. The decedent had agreed to pay the local taxes and insurance premiums and to maintain the property in reasonable repair as long as she lived. These promises were a part of the consideration for which the purchaser agreed to buy. The balance of the purchase price was not an enforceable debt until the promises were fulfilled. Had the decedent let the property go to pot, her executors could not have obtained a judgment against the purchaser. One must allege and prove in an action on a contract of this nature that all obligations he has undertaken have been carried out.
My position, in short, is this: The contract in question was executory as long as the decedent lived; an executory contract is not taxable because there is no enforceable debt involved; as the decedent was under no statutory duty to list an untaxable contract, the defendant illegally assessed the penalty against her estate.